THE ROMANCE OF NATURAL HISTORY. 



swept away by the floods of the river. The over- 

 hanging branches which have not (or had not at 

 the time this description was made) yet thrown 

 down their perpendicular shoots, cover a far 

 wider space. Three hundred and twenty main 

 trunks may be counted, while the smaller ones 

 exceed three thousand ; and each of these is con- 

 stantly sending forth its branches and pendent 

 root-shoots to form other trunks, and become the 

 augmenters of the vast colony. Immense popular 

 assemblies are sometimes convened beneath this 

 patriarchal fig, and it has been known to shelter 

 seven thousand men at one time beneath its ample 

 shadow.* 



The Baobab, a tree of tropical Africa, but now 

 naturalised in other hot countries, is one which 

 attains an immense bulk. Its growth is chiefly in 

 the trunk. It is by no means uncommon for a 

 bole of seventy-five or eighty feet in circumference 

 to begin to send out its branches at twelve or 

 fifteen feet from the ground ; and the entire height 

 is frequently little more than the circumference 

 of the trunk. The lower branches, at first hori- 

 zontal, attain a great length, and finally droop to 

 the ground, completely hiding the trunk, and giv- 

 ing to the tree the appearance of a vast hillock of 

 foliage. 



Some examples of the dimensions of this im- 

 mense, but soft-wooded and spongy tree, may be 

 adduced. Adanson, in 1748, saw, at the mouth of 

 the Senegal, baobabs which were from twenty-six 

 to twenty-nine feet in diameter, with a height of 

 little more than seventy feet, and a head of foliage 

 a hundred and eighty feet across. He remarks, 

 however, that other travellers had found speci- 

 mens considerably larger. Peters measured trunks 

 * Forbes 1 " Oriental Memoirs." 

 132 



