504 Hope. — The ‘ Sadd ’ of the Upper Nile . 
a plant to have a stem generally six inches thick at the base, 
and to shoot up to fifteen or sixteen feet in height, unless the 
stem had a certain degree of strength ? And doubtless the 
* Ambatch 5 attains its height above the water by the support 
which the Papyrus and Vossia afford it. It must therefore 
be flexible enough not to mind pressure. 
But Dr. Schweinfurth is not the only observer and botanical 
authority who may be quoted against Sir William Garstin 
on the side of the ‘ Ambatch.’ In ‘ Plantae Tinneanae,’ by 
Theodori Kotschy and Joannis Peyritsch, c Ambatch ’ is not 
botanically figured, that having been done before by Heuglin ; 
but a lithographed frontispiece shows a landscape with ‘ Am- 
batch ’ and papyrus and other plants growing together in 
the foreground. The £ Ambatch ’ is growing much higher 
than the papyrus, and the stems are bent down or broken off 
at various heights. The stems are therefore brittle ; but one 
can easily imagine that they form a substantial woof in the 
entanglement of which the papyrus and ‘ um-soof ’ form the 
warp. And the branches and twigs of the plants, being 
thickly set with stout prickles like those of a rose plant, 
would add to the trouble. 
In the ‘ Proemium ’ M. Kotschy tells us that, according to 
Lejean, ‘ les deux .rives sont couvertes de Papyrus, mais sur- 
tout de l’arbre aquatique appele Ambadj, qui, pendant lepoque 
de la fleuraison, c’est-a-dire en fevrier et mars, releve encore 
la beaute de son feuillage vert et etoile par des fleurs d’un 
jaune brillant.’ 
The Tinne botanists say that it is in the neighbourhood of 
Mt. Dinka (Njemati) one first sees thickets (or bushes) of Am- 
badj (Hcrminiera elaphroxylon) which become more and more 
frequent as one travels towards the south, and are associated 
with Pistia stratiotes, and Nymphea round about them ; and, 
near Hille-Kaka, a fern equally floating, Ceratopteris thalic- 
troides , comes in their company. At the mouth of the River 
Sobat much of the surface of the water is covered by reeds, 
and there, round the reeds and other plants above mentioned, 
one meets with Azolla nilotica growing very large, which is 
