The most generally employed remedy, for common purposes, by the inhabitants of Shoa, is the flowers and unripe seeds of the _Hagenia Abyssinica_, called by them “Cosso.” Bruce gives us a good description, and was the first who directed the attention of Europeans to this remarkable tree. In Shoa it grows frequently to the height of fifty feet. About one half of the way up the Tchakkah ascent, it flourishes remarkably well. It appears to be a short-lived tree. Of its wood the Negoos has all his gun-stocks manufactured, as it approaches nearly in colour to that employed for the same purposes in the European firearms he possesses. The wood, however, is far from being strong; but whilst the colour satisfies the eye of the monarch, the workmen he employs find it is well adapted, by its soft nature, to their tools, and its excellence for the purposes required is therefore never questioned, except by the unfortunate gunman, who, when the stock of his piece is fractured by any accident, must submit to a stoppage in his rations or pay, until its value has been reimbursed to the monarch, who always takes this method of ensuring carefulness as regards valuable property. The cosso tree, as was remarked by Bruce, does not grow below a certain elevation, which is about eight thousand feet above the level of the sea, in the 10th degree of latitude north of the equator. It is a very beautiful tree in appearance, and, I think, would grow very well in England. Its leaves are largely pennated, and of a lively green colour; a great deal brighter than the foliage of the chesnut-tree, which, in figure, the cosso somewhat approaches to, except that it is not quite so high. The flowers are of a blood red colour, and hang in large bunches, sometimes a foot or a foot and a half long, consisting of numerous small flowerets attached to one common footstalk. Amidst the bright green leaves of the tree, these drooping crimson masses have a very picturesque appearance. Cosso-trees do not seem to be so carefully cultivated at the present day in the country to the west of Tchakkah, as they appear to have been when the Sara and Durra Galla tribes occupied the country between the Barissa and Angolahlah. We find them now generally marking the sites of former Galla villages. On riding off the road on one occasion to examine a group of these trees, a civil herdsman conducted Walderheros and myself into a cave of some extent where cattle used formerly to be kept by the Galla, whom I then learned, in this situation had their principal town.