KKPLACEMENT OF TlIK ANCIENT K. AFRFCAX FOREST 



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the inner _^ras.s zones, and — to take a more local jjoint — it is 

 interesting- to find that animals — the "bine-buck" (C )nonti- 

 cola), the elephant-shrew (Petrodromns tciradaciylus) — many 

 butterflies, and such birds as AntJvcptcs Jiypodiliis, which on 

 Chirinda's northern outskirts venture only a few yards outside 

 the forest, and might well be regarded as ijurely forest, or at 

 most (like the Anthrcptcs) outskirts animals, range to the south 

 of Chirinda over a grass-jungle tract (the Jihu) that is nearly 

 20 miles wide. The fact is that the innermost humus zones, 

 narrowed to the north by the circumstance that the Iforest has for 

 hundreds of years held its own there while the slope outside it 

 became denuded, to the south still cover the large extent of 

 country mentioned. 



There is this difference between these zones and those that 

 are .dependent on altitude : that, while the inner higher altitudinal 

 zones have doubtless spread out during i)eriods of glaciation, 

 mountain forest replacing lowland forest and itself in places 

 being squeezed out of the country, yet it has been able to regain 

 the lost ground when milder conditions returned. But its re- 

 placement by the grass-veld zones, or whatever civilized man may 

 yet substitute ifor the latter — let us hope not desert ! — will pro- 

 bably be, for the greater part of the area concerned, final — till 

 man disappears. 



Addendum. — ^^Mr. J. M. Sim's paper — of great practical 

 interest^on " The Modification of South African Rainfall " * 

 reached me to-day, and, as it bears directly on some of the 

 points I have discussed, I add this note. He proves the disappear- 

 ance of great forests in the Cape at, I judge, a vastly more 

 rapid rate than may be seen here, but this, I take it, has been 

 in the main the result of the white man's presence. He shows 

 also that, in the Cape, drought conchtions, brought about by 

 man, have distinctly to be reckoned with as a direct factor in 

 forest destruction, and though such conditions have not, I be- 

 lieve, acted thus here, yet they may have done so in our lesser 

 rainfall areas to the west — // the results were not anticipated by 

 fire, which they probably commonly would be where fire was 

 already annual and the forest unprotected from it. Mr. Sim's 

 remarks on the stag-horning of isolated trees also show clearly 

 that my statement as to the apparent independence of the massed 

 condition enjoyed by our forest trees does not apply to the 

 same type oif tree under a much reduced or modified rainfall. 

 Here I know of one or two splendid isolated mahoganies, last 

 survivors of their patches, but now protected from fire, that are 

 in perfect health in spite of their isolation. 



I doubt, myself — rashly, for I have no personal acquain- 

 tance with them — whether Mr. Sim is quite right in supposing 

 that the Hottentots were kinder to the forests than the Kaffirs 

 have been — excepting where the Kaffirs have also felled or ring- 

 barked for cultivation. Hunting is quite as great an incentive 



* Rept. S.A. Ass. for Adv. of Science, Maritzlinrs' (T916). 



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