COUNT MOLE.

[61] A kind of crab found on the sea-coast; it is the Cancer cursor of Linnaeus, and the same that is found on the shores of the Antilles.

[62] The Baobab or Adansoia of botanists, is placed in the class Monadelphia polyandria, in the family of malvaceous plants, and has but one species.  The first of these trees seen by Adanson, were twenty-seven feet in diameter, about eighty-three feet in circumference.  Ray says they have been seen thirty feet in diameter, and Goldberry says he saw one of thirty-four feet.  According to the calculations of Adanson, a tree, twenty-five feet in diameter, must have taken 3750 years to acquire these dimensions, which would allow a foot growth in 150 years, or an in inch in twelve years and a half; but an observation of Goldberry’s would quite overturn this calculation.  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.  Otherwise, if we admitted that it takes thirty-six years to increase in diameter only eight lines, it would require fifty-four years for an inch, and 648 for a foot, which would make 16,200 years for a tree twenty-four feet in diameter!

[63] These aigrettes or white herons, are found in large flocks in this part of Africa; they follow the cattle to feed on the insects with which they are infested.

[64] The blacks think that all the whites are very rich in their own country.

[65] This lizard was probably a turpinambis.  This animal, which is not uncommon at Cape Verd, climbs up trees, frequents the marshy places, and is said to inflict severe wounds if it is not laid hold of with great precaution.  The inhabitants of the Mamelles assert that it devours young crocodiles.  This species seems to be the same as that which frequents the banks of the Nile.  It grows to the length of four feet and uses its tail in swimming.

THE END.