THE BAOBAB TREB. 
27 
ingeniously bore a liole in tli© trunk, wBich tbey Btop, 
after having tapped as much as tliey require, 
Tlio lieit^'lit of the baol>ab does not con'espond to its 
amazing bulk, as it seldom exceeds sixty feet. As it is 
of very rapid frrowtii, it acquires a diameter of three or 
four feet and its fall tLltitude in about thirty yeai-s^ and 
then continues to grow in circnniference. The larj^er 
beam-like branches, almost as thick at tlieir extremity 
as at their origin, are abruptly rounded, and tben eend 
forth smaller branches, with large, light green, pal mated 
leaves, Thebai'k is smooth and greyish. The oval fruits, 
wbich are of the size of large cucumbers, and brownish- 
yellow when ripe, hang from long twisted spongy stalks, 
and contain a wliite farinaceous substance, of an agree- 
able acidulated taste, enveloping the dark brown seeds. 
They are a favourite food of the monkeys, whence the tree 
has derived one of its names. 
From the depth of the incrustations formed on the 
marks which the Portuguese navigators of the fifteenth 
century used to cut in the large baobabs which they 
found growing on the African coast, and by comparing 
the relative dimensions of several trunks of a known age, 
Adanson concluded that a baobab of thirty feet in 
diameter must have lived at least five thousand years j 
but a more careful investigation of the rapid growth 
of the spongy wood has reduced the age of the giant 
tree to more moderate limits, and proved that, even in 
comparative youth, it attains the hoary aspect of extreme 
seniUty. 
The baobab, which belongs to the same family as the 
mallow or the hollyhock, and is, like them, emollient and 
mucilaginous in all its parts, ranges over a wide extent 
of Africa, particularly in the parts where the summer 
rains fall in abundance, as in Senegambia, in Soudan, 
and in Knbia, Dr. Livingstone admired its colossal pro- 
portions on the banks of the Zouga and the Zambesi. 
It forms n conspicuous feature in the landscape at llanaar 
