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Show 286 PHYSIOGNOMY OF PLANTS. velopment of their closed vascular bundles, must by reason of their floral parts be placed in the same natural family with asparagus and garden onions, we must associate the Adansonia (monkey breadtree, Baobab), as being certainly among the largest and oldest inhabitants of our planet. In the very first voyages of discovery of the Catalans and Portuguese, the navigators were accustomed to cut their names on these two species of trees, not merely to gratify the desire of handing down their names, but also to serve as marks or signs of possession, and of whatever rights nations claim on the ground of being the first discoverers. The Portuguese navigators often used as their " marco" or token of possession, the French motto of the Infant Don Henrique the Discoverer. Manuel de Faria y Sousa says in his Asia Portuguesa (t. i. cap. 2, pp. 14 and 18): "Era uso de los primeros Navegantes de dexar inscrito el Motto del Infante talent de bien faire, en la corteza de los arboles." (Compare also Barros, Asia, dec. i. liv. ii. cap. 2, t. i. p. 148; Lisboa, 1778.) The above-named motto, cut on the bark of two trees by Portuguese navigators in 1435, twenty-eight years, therefore, before the death of the Infante, is curiously connected in the history of discoveries with the elucidations to which the comparisons of Vespucci's fourth voyage with that of Gonzalo Coelho, in 1503, has given rise. V espucci relates that Coelho's admiral's ship was wrecked on an island which has been sometimes supposed to be San Fernando Noronha, sometimes the Pefiedo de San Pedro, and sometimes the problematical Island of St. Matthew. This last-named island was discovered by Garcia J ofre de Loaysa, on the 15th of October, 1525, in 2!0 S. lat., in the meridian of Cape Palmas, almost in the Gulf of Guinea. He remained there eighteen days at anchor, found crosses, as well as orange trees which had been planted and had become wild, and on two trunks of trees inscriptions dating back ninety years. (Navarrete, t. v. pp. 8, 247, and 401.) I have examined the questions presented by this account more in detail in my inquiries into the trustworthiness of Amerigo V espucci. (Exam en critique de l'hist. de la Geographie, t. v. pp. 129-132.) The oldest description of the Baobab (Adansonia digitata), is that given by the Venetian Aloysius Cadamosto (the real name was Alvise da Ca da Mosto), in 1454. He found at the mouth of the |