' ' AFRICA. :229 
Sparmann too, fpeaking of this tree, fays, 
that ** its biifhy leaves afforded him fhelrer 
" againft the heat of the fun." If Sparmann 
fometimes enjoyed the fhelter afforded him by 
the mimofa, affiiredly it mufl have been be- 
caufe he vvas not difficult ; and in certain cir- 
cumflances we are fatlsfied with very little. 
For my part I have already faid, and I fay it 
again, that the Qiadow of this tree is fo flight 
as fcarcely to darken the ground on which it 
falls. The truth of this afl^ertion will not be 
queflioned, if it be confidered, that its name, 
which ranges it in the clafs of feniitive plants, 
indicates fmall leaves thinly diftributed. I am 
indebted to the bark and flowers of the mimofa 
for a nurnber of curious infeds ; but I never 
only to the French tranflator, who, probably not under- 
ftanding the meaning of the word gregarious, tranflated the 
beginning of the above quotation, as if it had been, " the 
** boughs afford an afylum againft rapacious birds." There is 
alfo another miflake, but whether imputable to the French 
tranflator or to Vaillant we pretend not to fay. The tree of 
which LieutenantPaterfon fpeaks is not the mimofa nilotica, 
but, ^8 he himfelf fays, a non-defcript fpecies ; of courfe, the 
yuggednefs of the bark of the mimofa nilotica by no means 
proves Paterfon to have been unable to diftinguifh between 
rough and fmooth, or to have confounded the mimofa with 
the aloe dichotoma, which he elfewhere defcribes. T. 
0^3 found 
