REPLACEMENT OF THE ANCIENT E. AFRICAN FORESTi 5O9 



nioic specializtMl modern pyro])hytes have descended. Tlie 



Raiiivolfia ajjpears to owe its dispersal mainly to birds, and it 

 seems to me highly significant — but I do not know whether an 

 examination of other African forest areas would give a corre- 

 sponding result — that those forest-trees which possess congeners 

 in the fire-swept pastures are, for the most part, the ones which 

 l)roduce edible fruits: all but one in the list above are of this 

 category. The seeds of these, drop]:)ed into every conceivable sort 

 of stati(in outside, wfuild occasionally hit off conditions which would 

 be, in varying degree, suj^portable, and the transformation might 

 thus come aljout by easier stages than seeds dro])ped on the out- 

 skirts of a disappearing forest, and bound in a year or two to face 

 the full severity of the fires, could hojie (for. That the migration 

 has not been from the veld to the forest seems rather to be sug- 

 gested by the j^resent uniformly inhos])itable conditions in such 

 forests as Chirinda, though with elephants still abundant in them, 

 or natives making clearings, this may n(^t liave been the case to 

 the same extent in the i)ast. 



Tlic Influence of Man and other Animals on this Type of 

 J'Voodin</. — I have referred to fire as a factor that may repress, 

 temporarily, tlie gnnvth even of pyrophytic trees. It has not, in the 

 past, been the only repressive factor. It is a matter of com- 

 ment amongst our Kafirs generally, and also amongst white resi- 

 dents, that the country north and west of Chirinda has been be- 

 coming wooded with pyro])hytes at a great rate in recent years, 

 and Parinariuni eiiratelhcfoliiini has been making great strides in 

 the district generally. I consulted, independently, two aged 

 natives. Eacli said that in his youth the country in c|uestion was 

 as bare as the stri]) to its north still is, or barer. Asked to ac- 

 count for the change, one said that even Uapaca Kirkiana (now 

 the dominant tree and a help in famine) was then too scarce to 

 supply the local po])ulation. and that parties of natives used to go 

 regularly a dozen miles, to the Buzi, to collect the fruits. He 

 presumed that the seeds thus carried must have resulted in some 

 of the present groves. This explanation is by no means capable 

 of accounting for all the if acts even in relation to this one species, 

 and the old man was puzzled to explain the similar increase on 

 the part of Bracliystegia, the fruits of which genus have no such 

 interest for the natives ; but I mention his statement because it 

 suggests how great a factor for ra])i(l dispersal the natives may 

 in some cases be. 



My other informant — an old doctor — from whom I had long 

 1)reviously olitained much of the information with regard to the 

 medicinal uses of plants that I included in mv ])aper on the trees 

 and shrubs, stated that, for the most part, neither the Parinariuni 

 scrub nor the present proves of other species were new. He 

 had seen them as a child, but — the plants that have now made 

 trees were then regularly browsed back to the ground by the great 

 herds of buck that grazed our veld before the white man came. 



As a ]:)artial explanation this seems to me good, and othv'^rs 

 have confirmed it. It does not account for everything, for, if 



