ANNOTATIONS AND ADDITIONS. 91 



but he adds at the same time, that other travellers had 

 found trunks of nearly 32 English feet diameter. French 

 and Dutch sailors had, cut their names on the trees seen by 

 Adanson in letters half a foot long ; the dates added to the 

 names shewed these inscriptions to be all of the 16th cen- 

 tury, except one which belonged to the 15th. (In Adan- 

 son's " Families des Plantes," 1763, P. I. pp. ccxv.- 

 ccxviii., it stands as the 14th century, but this is doubtless 

 an error of inadvertence.) From the depth of the inscrip- 

 tions, which were covered with new layers of wood, arid 

 from the comparison of the thickness of different trunks of 

 the same species in which the relative age of the trees was 

 known, Adanson computed the probable age of the larger 

 trees, and found for a diameter of 32 English feet 5150 years. 

 (Voyage au Senegal, 1757, p. 66.) He prudently adds (I do 

 not alter his curious orthography) : " Le calcul de 1'aje de 

 chake couche n'a pas d'exactitude geometrike." In the 

 village of Grand Galarques, also in Senegambia, the negroes 

 have ornamented the entrance of a hollow Baobab tree with 

 sculptures cut out of the still fresh wood; the interior serves for 

 holding meetings in which their interests are debated. Such a 

 hall of assembly reminds one of the hollow or cave (specus) 

 of the plane tree in Lycia, in which Lucinius Mutianus, who 

 had previously been consul, feasted with twenty-one guests. 

 Plino (xii. 3) assigns to such a cavity in a hollow tree the 

 somewhat large allowance of a breadth of eighty Boman 

 feet. The Baobab was seen by Eene Caillie in the Valley 

 of the Niger near Jenne, by Caillaud in Nubia, and by 

 Wilhelm Peters along the whole eastern coast of Africa (where 



