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Updated: May 10, 2025
"One night," says Adanson, "a lion and a wolf entered the court of the house in which I slept, and unperceived, carried off my provisions; in the morning my hosts were quite satisfied, from the well-marked and well-known impressions of their feet in the sand, that the animals had come together to forage."
One of the articles, which attracted my notice, was an advertisement of Anthony Benezet's Historical Account of Guinea. I soon left my friend and his paper, and, to lose no time, hastened to London to buy it. In this precious book I found almost all I wanted. I obtained, by means of it, a knowledge of, and gained access to, the great authorities of Adanson, Moore, Barbot, Smith, Bosman and others.
He, in fact, measured a Baobab thirty-six years after Adanson, and found its diameter increased by only eight lines. The growth is not therefore uniformly progressive, and must become slower at a certain period of the age of this tree, in a proportion which it is hardly possible to determine.
"In China," remarks Colonel Smith, "wolves abound in the northern province of Shantung;" and Buffon, quoting from Adanson, asserts, that "there is a powerful species of the wolf in Bengal, which hunt in packs, in company with the lion."
In these islands grows the patriarch of vegetables described by the celebrated Adanson, under the name of Baobab, the circumference of which is often found to be above one hundred feet.
One of the articles which attracted my notice, was an advertisement of ANTHONY BENEZET'S Historical Account of Guinea. I soon left my friend and his paper, and, to lose no time, hastened to London to buy it. In this precious book I found almost all I wanted. I obtained, by means of it, a knowledge of, and access to, the great authorities of Adanson, Moore, Barbot, Smith, Bosman, and others.
Adanson, the French botanist, was about seventy years old when the Revolution broke out, and amidst the shock he lost everything his fortune, his places, and his gardens. But his patience, courage, and resignation never forsook him. He became reduced to the greatest straits, and even wanted food and clothing; yet his ardour of investigation remained the same.
The bark of this tree yields a yellow dye; its leaf is without indentation, and of a beautiful green; it is not very high; the wood is white, and the bark is easily reduced to powder. This was the first time that I saw the baobab, that enormous tree which has been described by Adanson, and which bears his name. I measured one, and found it to be forty feet in circumference.
A poor unhappy mother, whose son had been murdered by a Moorish banditti, found consolation in her deepest distress from the reflection that her boy, in the whole course of his blameless life, had never told a lie." Adanson, who visited Senegal, in 1754, describes the negroes as sociable, obliging, humane, and hospitable.
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