This trunk is crowned with a great number of fpreading branches remarkable for their thicknefs, and yet more for their length, which is from 50 to 60 feet. The center branch rifes perpendicularly but none of the reft make more than an angle of about 30 degrees, with the ftem, the greatest part fhooting out horizontally, fo that the ends frequently bend down till they touch the ground, fo as to give the whole, at a distance, the appearance of an hemifphere from 60 to 70 feet high, and about 140 in diameter.

To thefe branches above, there is a correfpondent number of radical branches below; that which correfponds with the center branch which rifes perpendicularly, extends perpendicularly downward to a great depth, and the others fpread nearly in a horizontal direction, fometimes to the distance of a hundred and forty feet.

The bark is nearly an inch thick, of an afh-coloured grey, greafy to the touch, bright, and very fmooth; the outfide is covered with a kind of varnish, and the infide is green, fpeckled with red: the wood is white, and very foft; the first shoots of the year are green and downy, fomewhat like the fhumach, or ftag's horn.

The leaves are oval, pointed at the end, about five inches long, and two and half broad; they are proportionably thick, fmooth, and without indention at the edge: from three to feven, but generally feven of thefe leaves, are attached to one pedicle, thofe that are fartheft from the branch being always the largeft.

From the bafe of the footstalk ifiue fmall ftipula, of a triangular

figure, which fall off as foon as the leaf is expanded.

This tree produces flowers, or bloffoms, which are much larger than thofe of any hitherto known; the buds themselves are no lefs than three inches in diameter, and when blown four inches long, and fix wide. Two or three of them iffue from one branch, and each is fufpended by a cylindrical pedicle, about a foot long, and about half an inch thick, which iffues from the infertion of the lowest leaves into the ftalk, and has feveral fmall scales, which fall off when the flower is blown.

The calix of the flower confifts only of one piece; the lower part forms a fhort tube, which spreads into the form of a faucer, the edge of which is divided into five equal parts of a triangular fhape, which turn back femicircularly below the tube, reaching farther than its bafe; the infide of this calix is entirely covered with a white shining pile, and the outfide with a green pile. As foon as the fruit is knit, the calix falls off.

The petals are five in number, all of the fame length with the calix, and white.

From the fame center, and within the petal, rifes a cylinder, or rather cone, which spreads into about 700 ftamina, or filaments, each having a fmall fubftance in form of a kidney at the end of it, the convex part of which opens into two cells, which fhed a duft confifting of fmall white tranfparent particles.

From the center of the calix rises the piftil, confifting of an ovary, a ftylus, and feveral ftigmata. The ftigmata are in number from 10 to 14; the ovary is at the bottom

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of

of the pistil, terminates in a point, and is covered with a thick pile.

The ovary becomes a very confiderable fruit, of an oval fhape, pointed at each end, about 10 inches long, and fix inches wide; it is covered with a kind of woody and very hard bark, about one third of an inch thick; and this fhell is covered with a green down; when the down is removed, it appears blackish, and flightly marked with 10 or 14 grooves, which reach its whole length.

The fruit never opens of itfelf; but when it is cut acrofs, it difcovers from 10 to 14 partitions, compofed of a redish membrane, which form fo many cells that are filled with the feeds.

The feeds, however, are not difcovered at the firft opening of the fruit, being inveloped in a fpongy substance of a whitish colour. The feeds are shaped like a kidney-bean, of a blackish brown colour, and very fmooth and bright; they are about half an inch long, and fomewhat less than the third of an inch wide.

The tree sheds its leaves in November, and new ones begin to appear in June. It flowers in July, and the fruit ripens in October and November.

It delights in a fandy, light, and moift ground; it is very common in Senegal, and the Cape de Verd iflands; it is found 100 leagues up the country at Gulam, and upon the fea coaft as far as Sierra-lione: if the center or tap root is bruifed in its defcent by any ftony or impenetrable fubftance, it rots, and the tree foon perifhes. It is beft propagated by plants from fix months to two years old, which fhould be raised from the feeds; for

though flips will fometimes grow, they more frequently fail.

This tree is alfo fubject to a mouldinefs, which fpreads through all the woody part, and reduces it to the confiftence of a pith, without making any alteration in its colour, or in the difpofition of its branches. In this ftate it is incapable of fupporting itself against the wind, and is therefore generally broken off near the middle by the first hard gale.

If it neither rots nor grows mouldy it lives very long; a fact which, at first fight, it appears difficult to afcertain; but M. Adanfon relates, in his account of a voyage to Senegal, that there are two of these trees in one of the Magellan iflands, infcribed with the names of feveral Europeans, and very diftinétly dated in the 16th and 15th centuries; there are alfo on the fame trees dates of the 14th century, but they are almoft obliterated by time: thefe are probably the very trees mentioned by Thevenot, in his account of a voyage to the Terra Antarctica in 1555. The letters of these names were scarce fix inches high, and the names themfelves took up fcarce two feet in length, which is not more than a ninth of the present circumference of the tree; it is therefore probable that they were not infcribed when the trees were very young: however, fetting the date of the 14th century wholly afide, and fuppofing the trees which are now 18 feet round, to have been but two feet round in the 15th century, it is clear that if in two centuries they gained 16 feet circumference, which is five feet one eighth diameter, they will not gain a diameter of 25 feet, their · ufual

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ufual dimenfions, in lefs than eight centuries. It is well known that trees increase very faft when young, and more flowly as they approach the stationary magnitude of their full growth. A tree of this kind is known to arrive at the height of 5 feet, and to be from an inch to an inch and a half in diameter the first year, which at the end of ten years is 15 feet high, and one foot in diameter; and about a foot and a half in diameter, and 20 feet high at the end of 20 years; fuch was the increase of the trees, which M. David, the French governor of Senegal, planted in that island in the year 1736, and it is neceflary to remark here, that the foil is fandy, moift, and exactly fuch as the calabash tree most delights in; and that though this progreffion is not to be wholly relied upon, yet that the growth of this tree, which is very flow confidering its enormous fize, muft continue many thousand years, and, perhaps, reach as far back as the deluge, fo that, upon the whole, fome calabash or baobab trees may be confidered as the most ancient living monuments on the face of the earth.

It is, without doubt, the largest vegetable production in nature, and it is found only in Africa, and principally in the western parts of it, which extend from the Niger to the kingdom of Benin; there is, however, one of them growing in Martinico, which is fuppofed to have fprung up from a feed brought by fome negroe from the coaft of Africa; for it is ufual with them to carry about them the feeds of fuch plants as they daily ufe, in the fecond pocket of their tobacco bag, which they wear faftened to a belt thrown across their fhoulder, and

by this practice a great variety of African plants have, as it were, been naturalifed in the American fettlements, which have not yet received American received American names, and which ought to be excluded from the natural history of that country.

The virtues and uses of this tree, and its fruit, are various; it most resembles the plant called in Latin malva, by the French mauve, and is like that mucillaginous, efpecially the bark and the leaves, and thefe parts are therefore principally ufed by the negroes of Senegal ; they dry them in the fhaded air, and then reduce them to powder, which is of a pretty good green colour; this powder they preferve in bags of linen or cotton, and call it lillo; they use it every day, putting two or three pinches of it into a mefs, whatever it happens to be, as we do pepper and falt; but their view is not to give a relifh to their food, but to preferve a perpetual and plentiful perfpiration, and to attemper the too great heat of the blood; purposes which it certainly anfwers, as feve-. ral Europeans have proved by repeated experiments, preferving themfelves from the epidemic fever, which, in that country, deftroys Europeans like the plague, and generally rages during the months of September and October, when, the rains having fuddenly ceafed, the fun exhales the water left by them upon the ground, and fills the air with a noxious vapour. M. Adanfon, in that critical feafon, made a light ptifan of the leaves of the baobab, which he had gathered in the Auguft of the preceding year, and had dried in the fhade, and drank conftantly about

a pint of it every morning, either before or after breakfast, and the fame quantity every evening after the heat of the fun began to abate; he alfo fometimes took the fame quantity in the middle of the day, but this was only when he felt fome fymptoms of an approaching fever. By this precaution he preferved himself during the five years he refided at Senegal from the diarrhea and fever, which are so fatal there, and which are, however, the only dangerous difeafes of the place; the other officers fuffered very feverely, one only excepted, upon whom M. Adanfon prevailed to ufe this remedy, which, for its fimplicity, was defpifed by the reft.

This ptifan alone alfo prevents that heat of urine which is common in these parts, from the month of July to November, provided the party abftains from wine.

The fruit is not lefs useful than the leaves and the bark; the pulp that invelopes the feeds has an agreeable acid taste, and is eaten for pleasure; it is alfo dried and powdered, and thus ufed medicinally in peftilential fevers, the dyfentery, and bloody flux; the dofe is a drachm, paffed through a fine fieve, taken either in common water, or in an infufion of the plantain.

The woody bark of the fruit, and the fruit itfelf, when spoiled, helps to fupply the negroes with an excellent foap, which they make by drawing a lye from the afhes, and boiling it with palm oil that begins to be rancid.

The trunks of fuch of these trees as are decayed, the negroes hollow out into burying places for their poets, muficians, and buffoons; perfons of thefe characters they

efteem greatly while they live, fuppofing them to derive their fuperior talents from forcery, or a commerce with demons; but they regard their bodies with a kind of horror when dead, and will not give them burial in the ufual manner, neither fuffering them to be put into the ground, nor thrown into the fea, or any river, because they imagine that the water would not then nourish the fish, nor the earth produce its fruits. The bodies fhut up in these trunks become perfectly dry without rotting, and form a kind of mummies without the help of embalment.

The baobab is very diftinct from the calabafhtree of America, with which it has been confounded by father Labat.

The botanists who have mentioned this tree, of whom Profper Alpinus was the firft, knew only the leaves and the fruit, nor has the flower, any more than the tree itself, been known till very lately; the flower is the part moft neceffary for affigning the place of the baobob in the vegetable kingdom, and the vaft magnitude of the tree is a more fingular and remarkable phænomenon, than all the hiftorians of botany, or perhaps of the world, have yet produced.