Chap. VIII, 
VITALITY OF THE MOWANA-TEEE. 
103 
external injury, not even a fire, can destroy tins tree from without; 
nor can any injury be done from within, as it is quite common 
to find it hollow; and I have seen one in which twenty or thhty 
men could he doTO and sleep as in a hut. Nor does cutting 
down exterminate it, for I saw instances in Angola in which it 
continued to gTow in length after it was lying on the ground. 
Those trees called exogenous grow by means of successive 
layers on the outside. The inside may be dead, or even removed 
altogether, without affecting the life of the tree. This is the 
case with most of the trees of oim climate. The other class is 
caUed endogenous, and increases by layers applied to the inside; 
and when the hoUow there is full, the gTowth is stopped—the tree 
must die. Any injury is felt most severely by the first class on 
the bark—^by the second on the inside; while the inside of the 
exogenous may be removed, and the outside of the endogenous may 
be cut, without stopping the growth in the least. The mowana 
possesses the powers of both. The reason is that each of the 
laminae possesses its o^vn independent vitality; in fact, the baobab 
is rather a gigantic bulb run up to seed than a tree. Each of 
eighty-four concentric rings had, in the case mentioned, grown 
an inch after the tree had been blown over. The roots, which 
may often be observed extending along the surface of the gvound 
forty or fifty yards from the trunk, also retain then: vitahty after 
the tree is laid low; and the Portuguese now know that the best 
way to treat them is to let them alone, for they occupy much 
more room when cut dovm than when grov/ing. 
The wood is so spongy and soft, that an axe can be struck in 
so far with a good blow that there is great difficulty in pulHng it 
out again. In the dead mowana mentioned the concentric rings 
were well seen. The average for a foot at tlmee different jfiaces 
was eighty-one and a half of these rings. Each of the laminae 
can be seen to be composed of two, tliree, or four layers of hgneous 
tubes; but supposing each ring the gTOvdh of one year, and the 
semidiameter of a mowana of one hundred feet in chcumference 
about seventeen feet, if the central point were in the centre of 
the tree, then its age would lack some centoies of being as old 
as the Cliristian era (1400). Though it possesses amazing vitality, 
it is difficult to believe that this gveat baby-looking bulb or tree is 
as old as the pyramids. 
M 2 
