110 VITALITY OF THE MOW ANA-TREE. Chap. VII] 



five feet in circumference. It is the same species as those 

 which Adanson and others "believed, from specimens seen in 

 Western Africa, to have been alive before the Flood. These 

 savans came to the conclusion that " therefore there never was 

 any Flood at all." I would back a true mowana to survive 

 a dozen floods. I do not however believe that any of the 

 specimens now existing reach back to the Deluge. I counted 

 the concentric rings in one of these trees in three different 

 parts, and found that upon an average there were eiglnVy-one 

 and a half to a foot. Supposing each ring to be the growth of 

 one year, a mowana one hundred feet in circumference, 01 

 with a semi-diameter of about seventeen feet, would be only 

 fourteen centuries old, which is some centuries less ancient 

 than the Christian era. 



As the natives make a strong cord from the fibres of the 

 (21) mowana-bark, the whole of the trunk, as high as they can 

 reach, is often denuded of its covering. The bare wood 

 throws out fresh bark, and the process is repeated so often that 

 it is common to see the lower five or six feet an inch or two 

 less in diameter than the part above. Almost any other tree 

 would be killed by such treatment, but such is the wonderful 

 vitality of the mowana that strij>s of bark which are torn off, 

 and only remain attached at one end, continue to grow. No 

 external injury, not even a fire, destroys this tenacious plant 

 from without ; and so little does it regard any injury within 

 that it is common to find it hollow. I have seen a specimen 

 of this kind in which twenty or thirty men could lie down. 

 Even felling does not extinguish its vitality. I was witness 

 of an instance in Angola in which each of eighty-four 

 concentric rings grew an inch in length after it was lying on 

 the ground. Those trees called exogenous increase in bulk by 

 means of successive layers on the outside. The inside may be 

 removed without affecting the life of the plant. This is the 

 case with most of the trees of our climate. The second class 

 is called endogenous, and increases by layers applied to the 

 inside ; the outside may be cut without stopping the growth. 

 Any injury is felt most severely by the first class on the bark 

 — by the second on the interior wood. The mowana possesses 

 the powers of both, because each of the laminae has an 

 independent vitality of its own : in fact, it is rather a gigantic 



