ANNOTATIONS AND ADDITIONS. 89 



which, bearing no fruit, lived eighty years. (Grundziige 

 der Botanik, 1843, S. 1003). 



With the dragon trees, which, notwithstandiiig the gi- 

 gantic development of their closed vascular bundles, must 

 by reason of their floral parts be placed in the same natural 

 family with asparagus and garden onions, we must asso- 

 ciate the Adansonia (monkey bread-tree, Baobab,) as being 

 certainly among the largest and oldest inhabitants of our 

 planet. In the very first voyages of discovery of the Cata- 

 lans and Portuguese, the navigators were accustomed to cut 

 their names on these two species of trees, not merely to 

 gratify the desire of handing down their names, but also to 

 serve as marks or signs of possession, and of whatever rights 

 nations claim on the ground of being the first discoverers. 

 The Portuguese navigators often used as their " marco" or 

 token of possession the French motto of the Infant Don 

 Henrique the Discoverer. Manuel de Faria y Sousa says in 

 his Asia Portuguesa (T. i. cap. 2, pp. 14 and 18) : "Era 

 nso de los primeros Navegantes de dexar inscrito el Motto 

 del Infante, talent de Men faire, en la corteza de los 

 arboles." (Compare also Barros, Asia, Dec. I. liv. ii. cap. 2, 

 T. i. p. 148; Lisboa, 1778.) 



The above-named motto cut on the bark of two trees by 

 Portuguese navigators in 1435, twenty-eight years there- 

 fore before the death of the Infante, is curiously con- 

 nected in the history of discoveries with the elucidations to 

 which the comparison of Vespucci's fourth voyage with that 

 of Gonzalo Coelho, in 1503, has given rise. Vespucci re- 

 lates that Coelho's admiral's ship was wrecked on an island 



