136 
LUCAS'S 
planted, the leaves fall off, and the root is taken from the ground, 
and being cut into fmall pieces, is dried in the fun, in which 
Hate it may be kept for tv/o years. Its further preparation 
confifts in reducing it to a fine powder, and mixing it with 
palm oil till it aflumes the confiilency of pafte. 
The other root is that of a tree, of which the name had ef- 
caped the Shereef s recolledion : boiling is the only procefs that 
is re(|uifite in preparing it for ufe. 
The fame charadler of fufficiency wliich marks the catalogue 
of the different kinds of grain in Bornou, belongs alfo to the 
lift of its various Fruits \ for though neither olives nor oranges 
are feen in the empire, and even figs are rare, and though the 
apples and plumbs of its grov/th deferve no commendation, and 
the dates are as indifferent as they are fcarce, yet grapes, and 
apricots, and pomegranates, together with lemons and limes, 
and the two fpecies of melons, the water and the mufk, are 
produced in large abundance.* But one of the moft valuable 
of 
* The country aljounds in different fpecies of fruit trees, but that which produces 
the date is not of the mimber. 
Ben Alli. 
