REPLACEMENT OF THE ANCIENT E. AFRICAN FOREST ^(Jj 



l)ack by the process already noted. Conij^are, also, W'hvte's 

 description below. 



Not that their elevated position is. Ijy an\- means, all there 

 is in favour of the hill-tops as a last refuge of iforest. Sand- 

 stone and shale below, they are frequently capped with overlying 

 dolerite and the fertile red loam that belongs to it, and that seem> 

 to offer this type of forest the best guarantee of the luscious 

 margin, even in the dry season, which helps it to keep out lire. 

 At the same time, these dolerite caps are in several cases a con- 

 tinuous part of the main masses of our two big trap-areas — are. 

 so to speak, the very slightly outstretched processes of a great 

 Amoeba — and it is therefore highly suggestive of the first view 

 here mentioned, that it is chiefly these, the culminating points, 

 and not the main masses, that to-day carry forest. Chirinda. 

 Chipete and Maruma are amongst the examples. Again, some 

 of the higher mountain-forests, and considerable slices of 

 Chirinda itself, as well as small jiatches elsewhere, and some ex- 

 perimental planting of my own, show clearly that this ty])e oif 

 forest can flourish ]:)erfectly well on the sandstone and shale, 

 although, for indirect reasons, such as the one T have suggested, 

 it has undoubtedly, I think, been the general tcndencv for the 

 fires to remove it from these areas first. 



The plants and animals of the forest-])atches afford evidence 

 of the usual kind. ( )ne has to be cautious in relation to the 

 alternative possibility of migration, and a bird like the Alilanji 

 Bulbul {Phyllasfrephits iiiilanjciisis), which inhabits also the 

 wooded kloofs, is under su.spicion of ha\ing travelled along Ijy 

 easy stages ; but it seems significant that trees with no special 

 means of seed-dispersal are found in very widely-se])arated 

 patches vniconnected by water, and that the same ai)plie< to 

 animals that, at any rate, one does not suspect even of local 

 migration. Such are the common Robin of Chirinda ( Erifha- 

 cus S2i'\)iiiertoni), formerly found only there and in Chipete, 

 but since discovered by Air. ]\ A. Sheppard in forest-patches 

 near Macequece. on the Beira railway, and such shade-having 

 and imenterprising fliers as the butterflies At erica (/a! cue and 

 Eupha^dra neophron, taken by me in the Sitatonga and Chirinda 

 forests, and seen in others. However, the resemblance lietween 

 their arthro]X)d inhabitants «'enerally is striking, and one finds 

 such titterly sluggish species as the scarlet millipede o<f the tree- 

 trunks (Spirolobits), and a barely-moving "red spider" (Troin- 

 bidiutn) in widely-separated patches. Cases like these last seem 

 to me to tell decisively against the theory of migration. 



The usual succession of vegetation that follows forest also 

 affords good evidence df progressive shrinkage and ])robable 

 former continuity, and the case of Chipete is instructive in this 

 and in other ways. It is a patch of perhaps 40 acres crowning 

 a hill, and separated now from the main body of Chirinda by a 

 wide kloof and several hundred yards of grassy hillside. There 

 is a little wooding in the kloof, and there are three diminutive 

 scraps of it near its head, on the Chipete side, on the sandstone. 



