A Naturalist in Mid-Africa; being an Account of a Journey to the Mountains of the Moon and Tanganyika

Abstract

IN 1862 Baron von der Decken discovered on Kilima Njaro a number of plants which are quite different from those of the surrounding country, and are allied to those of the mountains of Abyssinia and the Cameroons, and of the lowlands of the Mediterranean and the Cape. The collections made by the late Joseph Thomson on the lower slopes of the same mountain and on the plateau of Masai-land proved the complex nature of the East African flora, and enabled Sir Joseph Hooker, in a paper which is one of the classics of African literature, to suggest the sources whence its constituents were derived. The interest thus aroused in the geographical affinities of this flora subsequently sent Sir H. H. Johnston and a host of German botanists to undertake detailed work in Kilima Njaro. Still more recently it inspired Mr. Scott Elliot to undertake his adventurous journey to Ruwcnzori; for he tells us in his opening page, that the object of his expedition was “to solve the question of botanical areas which on this side of Africa had often puzzled me.”

A Naturalist in Mid-Africa; being an Account of a Journey to the Mountains of the Moon and Tanganyika.

By G. F. E. Scott Elliot 8vo. Pp, xvi + 413, with 50 illustrations and 4 maps. (London: A. D. Innes and Co., 1896.)