172 ZAMBEZIAN FLORA 



think the K. pinnata). This valueless prodigy 

 also grows in the plains, in company with small 

 acacias and attenuated trachylobiums, and is readily 

 distinguished by the immensity of its heavy, sausage- 

 shaped seed vessels, which, hanging at the extremity 

 of a lengthy stalk, often measure three or four feet 

 long by eighteen inches in circumference, and are 

 of great weight. They contain a number of hard 

 seeds, embedded in a fibrous substance not unlike 

 a bath loofah, but much coarser, and of no use for 

 that purpose. The tree itself, a poor, scabrous- 

 trunked, sickly production, looks like some de- 

 spondent consumptive, whose misdirected energies 

 have been wasted in the production of a fruit of 

 which it is evidently ashamed. 



Then look at the Aloe. Here is another instance 

 of Nature's playfulness. It was evidently intended 

 to startle wayfarers by its poorly executed resem- 

 blance to some prehistoric reptile. It writhes over 

 the surface of outcropping slabs of granite, its 

 thick, fleshy limbs (I cannot call them leaves) in 

 their red spots on a green base stiU trying, in the 

 face of much discouragement, to carry on the old 

 snake deception, and by now resigned to failure. 

 I have never seen it in flower, but other writers 

 state that during this period the Aloe is trans- 

 figured, and the warm waxy-red of its bloom is 

 so vivid and alluring that you forget in contem- 

 plating it the unattractive features of the unlovely 

 growth from which it sprang. 



By the side of a small stream-bed you see 

 massive Khayas,* their great limbs overhanging the 



* The African Mahogany, an excellent timher tree. 



