Its fruit is a red bean, with a black spot in the middle of it, which is inclosed in a round capsula, or covering, of a woody nature, very tough and hard. This bean seems to have been in the earliest ages used for a weight of gold among the Shangalla, where that metal is found all over Africa; and by repeated experiments, I have found that, from the time of its being gathered, it varies very little in weight, and may perhaps have been the very best choice that therefore could have been made between the collectors and the buyers of gold.
I have said this tree is called Kuara, which signifies the Sun. The bean is called Carat, from which is derived the manner of esteeming gold as so many carats fine. From the gold country in Africa it passed to India, and there came to be the weight of precious stones, especially diamonds; so that to this day in India we hear it commonly spoken of gold or diamonds, that they are of so many carats fine, or weight. I have seen these beans likewise from the West-Indian islands. They are just the same size, but, as far as I know, are not yet applied to any use there.
Walkuffa
London Publish’d Decr. 1.st 1789. by G. Robinson & Co.
WALKUFFA.
This tree grows in the Kolla, or hottest part of Abyssinia. It does not flower immediately after the rains, as most trees in Abyssinia do, that is, between the beginning of September and the Epiphany, when the latter rains in November do still fall in violent periodical showers, but it is after the Epiphany, towards the middle of January, that it first appears covered with blossoms. However beautiful, it has no smell, and is accounted destructive to the bees, for which reason it is rooted out and destroyed in those countries that pay their revenue in honey. It resembles the Kentish cherry-tree in appearance, especially if that tree has but a moderate, not overspreading top. The wood immediately below its bark is white, but under that a brownish yellow, something like cedar; the old trees that I have seen turn darker, and are not unlike to the wood of the laburnum, or pease-cod tree. The natives say it does not swim in water. This however I can contradict upon experiment. The wood, indeed, is heavy, but still it swims.
Although the painting of this tree, which I here exhibit, is neither more nor less accurate in the delineation of its parts than every other design of natural history given in this work to the public, yet the inimitable beauty of the subject itself has induced me to bestow much more pains upon it than any other I have published, and, according to my judgment, it is the best executed in this collection. All its parts are so distinctly figured, the flower exposed in such variety of directions, that it supersedes the necessity of describing it to the skilful botanist, who will find here every thing he possibly could in the flower itself. This is a great advantage, for if the parts had been ever so studiously and carefully reserved in a hortus siccus as they are spread upon the paper, it would have been impossible not to have lost some of its finer members, they are so fragil, as I have often experienced in different attempts to dry and preserve it.
The flower consists of five petals, part of each overlapping or supporting the other, so that it maintains its regular figure of a cup till the leaves fall off, and does not spread and disjoin first, as do the generality of these rosaceous flowers before they fall to the ground. Its colour is a pure white, in the midst of which is a kind of sheath, or involucrum, of a beautiful pink colour, which surrounds the pistil, covering and concealing about one-third of it. Upon the top of this is a kind of impalement, consisting of five white upright threads, and between each of these are disposed three very feeble stamina of unequal lengths, which make them stand in a triangular oblong form, covered with yellow farina.