206 Gilpin's forest soeneky. 



subjoining an account of a few particular species, 

 wliicli are remarkably singular. 



In tbe memoirs of tbe Frencli academy we find 

 a description of a veiy curious tree, by Mr. 

 Adanson, called tlie Boabab. It is a native of 

 Senegal, and has been taken notice of by Prosper 

 Alpinus, and other botanists ; but Mr. Adanson, 

 who spent several years in those pai'ts, seems 

 to have had the best opportunities of being 

 acquainted with it. As to its botanical peculiari- 

 ties, which are great, and its physical uses, which 

 are many, we enter not into them. We have only 

 to do with its external form, which is very uncom- 

 mon. It is supposed to be the largest of Nature's 

 vegetable productions — the behemoth of the 

 forest. From Mr. Adanson's account one should 

 suppose the Boabab to be a kind of natural 

 pollard. He tells us its trunk seldom rises higher 

 than twelve feet, though its diameter exceeds 

 seventy. From this amazing trunk spring a 

 number of massy branches. The centre branch 

 rises perpendicularly sixty or seventy feet; the 

 lateral, branches shoot in angles less and less 

 acute, till the lowest series form right angles 



