150 THE MOW ANA TREE. 



grow, and resemble closely marks made in the necks of the 

 cattle of the island of Mull and of Caff re oxen, where a 

 piece of skin is detached and allowed to hang down. No 

 external injury, not even a fire, can destroy this tree from 

 without ; nor can any injury be done from within, as it 

 is quite common to find it hollow ; and I have seen one 

 in which twenty or thirty men could lie down and sleep 

 as in a hut. Nor does cutting down exterminate it, for I 

 saw instances in Angola in which it continued to grow in 

 length after it was lying on the ground. Those trees 

 called exogenous grow by means of successive layers on 

 the outside. The inside may be dead, or even removed 

 altogether, without affecting the life of the tree. This is 

 the case with most of the trees of our climate. The other 

 class is called endogenous, and increases by layers applied 

 to the inside ; and when the hollow there is full, the 

 growth is stopped — the tree must die. Any injury is felt 

 most severely by the first class on the bark — by the 

 second on the inside ; while the inside of the exogenous 

 may be removed, and the outside of the endogenous may 

 be cut, without stopping the growth in the least. The 

 mowana possesses the powers of both. The reason is that 

 each of the laminae possesses its own independent vitality ; 

 in, fact, the baobab is rather a gigantic bulb run up to 

 seed than a tree. Each of eighty-four concentric rings had, 

 in the case mentioned, grown an inch after the tree had 

 been blown over. The roots, which may often be observed 

 extending along the surface of the ground forty or fifty 

 yards from the trunk, also retain their vitality after the 

 tree is laid low ; and the Portuguese now know that the 

 best way to treat them is to let them alone, for they 

 occupy much more room when cut down than when 

 growing. 



The wood is so spongy and soft, that an axe can be 

 struck in so far with a good blow that there is great 

 difficulty in pulling it out again. In the dead mowana 

 mentioned the concentric rings were well seen. The 

 average for a foot at three different places was eighty-one 

 and a half of these rings. Each of the laminae can be seen 

 to be composed of two, three, or four layers of ligneous 

 tubes ; but supposing each ring the growth of one year, 

 and the semidiameter of a mowana of one hundred feet in 

 circumference about seventeen feet, if the central point 

 were in the centre of the tree, then its age would lack 



