Though my residence in Dar-Fûr was so much protracted, I feel myself able to furnish only a very imperfect catalogue of its vegetable productions. These are to be sought chiefly in the districts to the South, where water abounds, and where the extreme restraint under which I found myself prevented me from seeking them. During seven or eight months in the year the whole surface of the earth to the North is dried up by the sun, and the minute plants which spring and flourish during the _Harîf_[45], are mingled in the general marcescence, as soon as that season is passed. Even the trees, whose fibres pierce more deeply into the substance of their parent soil, lose the distinctive marks of their proper foliage, and exhibit to the distant observer only the sharp outline of their grosser ramifications. Of the trees which shade our forests or adorn our gardens in Europe, very few exist in Dar-Fûr. The characteristic marks of those species which most abound there, are their sharp thorns, and the solid and unperishable quality of their substance. 1. The Tamarind is not very common in the quarter I frequented; but those which were visible to me were of great height and bulk, and bore a copious supply of fruit. 2. The Plane, platanus Orientalis, _Deleib_, is found, but seems rather to have been brought from Egypt, than indigenous. 3. Sycamore of Egypt, _Ficus Sycomorus_, _Gimmeiz_, a few near Cobbé; said to be much more common to the southward. I did not observe that it produced any fruit. 4. _Nebbek_ Ar. _Paliurus Athenæi_. Of this there are two species in Dar-Fûr. They term the largest _Nebbek-el-arab_. There is a difference in their fruit, as well as in their external appearance. The one is a bush, with leaves of dark green, not very different from those of the ivy, but much thinner. It appeared to be the same I had seen in the gardens of Alexandria. The other a tree, growing to considerable size, but having both the leaves and fruit smaller, and the fruit of darker colour, and somewhat different flavour. Both of them equally thorny. The natives eat the fruit fresh or dry; for it dries on the tree, and so remains great part of the winter months. In that state it is formed into a paste of not unpleasant flavour, and is a portable provision on journies.