THE AMERICAN BOTANIST 



115 



broad that the natives can sleep on them. The interior of the 

 trunk is soft and spongy and, as in other trees, may decay and 

 form large cavities in which rain water accumulates. Acting 

 upon this hint from Nature, the natives of Kordofan have hol- 

 lowed out the trunks of many specimens and in the rainy sea- 

 son fill them with water for use when the rains cease. A hole 

 is often bored near the base by means of which the water is 

 drawn off as wanted. In a recent Kezv' Bulletin, a note from 

 an officer in the Darfur campaign mentions these trees as fol- 

 lows : "On our side of the border in Kordofan, they have no 

 water for perhaps hundreds of miles and live in the dry season 

 on water stored in hollow trees called tebaldis. They are ugly, 

 bottle-shaped trees, lall trunk, from six feet to twenty feet 

 thick and a good one holds 1,000 gallons. Each family owns 

 certain trees and each tree has its own name. They scrape a 

 small pond lat the foot and after a shower everybody turns out 

 to fill tebaldi trees. A man stands at the top of the bole, about 

 twenty feet up, hauls the water up in a skin bucket and pours 

 it into the tree. It keeps very sweet and is better than well 

 water." The fruits of the baobab are oval, brownish green, 

 about the size of a cucumber and contain an edible pulp of 

 which the monkeys are very fond. From this fact the tree is 

 some times called the monkey bread tree. 



