he
time, these savans came to the conclusion that "therefore there never
was any flood at all." I would back a true mowana against a dozen
floods, provided you do not boil it in hot sea-water; but I can not
believe that any of those now alive had a chance of being subjected to
the experiment of even the Noachian deluge. The natives make a strong
cord from the fibres contained in the pounded bark. The whole of the
trunk, as high as they can reach, is consequently often quite denuded of
its covering, which in the case of almost any other tree would cause its
death, but this has no effect on the mowana except to make it throw out
a new bark, which is done in the way of granulation. This stripping of
the bark is repeated frequently, so that it is common to see the lower
five or six feet an inch or two less in diameter than the parts above;
even portions of the bark which have broken in the process of being
taken off, but remain separated from the parts below, though still
connected with the tree above, continue to grow, and resemble closely
marks made in the necks of the cattle of the island of Mull and of
Caffre oxen, where a piece of skin is detached and allowed to hang down.
No external injury, not even a fire, can destroy this 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 thirty men could lie down
and sleep as in a hut. Nor does cutting down exterminate it, for I saw
instances in Angola in which it continued to grow 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 our climate. The other class is called
endogenous, and increases by layers applied to the inside; and when
the hollow there is full, the growth 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 own 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