BOTANY I 49 



a number of scientific and other officers in the colonies who have 

 taken up the study of the flora as a hobby, and co-operate with 

 institutions in England. A part of the botanical work in Africa 

 has resulted also from scientific enterprise carried out under the 

 auspices of universities in Europe and South Africa. This field 

 for the activities of British scientists seems to be capable of expan- 

 sion, particularly in West Africa, which has not attracted the scien- 

 tist nearly so much as the east. 



Most of the agricultural and forestry departments are collecting 

 herbaria of the native flora which serve as important reference 

 collections. There are also a few botanical gardens, on which, how- 

 ever, expenditure has recently been much reduced. Ideally, a 

 botanic garden should be staffed to build up an herbarium and to 

 meet the local needs of systematic botany and perhaps also plant 

 ecology, and should maintain close co-operation with agricultural 

 experimental stations. The educative value of botanic gardens is 

 one of their great assets, and for this reason it might be undesirable 

 to develop them before centres of higher education are definitely 

 fixed. Establishments like Makerere in Uganda, Achimota in the 

 Gold Coast and Yaba in Nigeria, will eventually require botanic 

 gardens near at hand, as they grow to the status of universities. 



The more important centres of botanical research already in 

 existence are as follows: in East Africa the research institute at 

 Amani, of which Mr. A. H. Glend Hill is director, was originally 

 established by the German administration, and now has a large- 

 scale acclimatization station together with departments for physi- 

 ology, genetics, biochemistry, and plant pathology. There is also 

 a large herbarium in charge of Mr. P. J. Greenway from which 

 information is constantly supplied for purposes of agriculture, 

 forestry, animal husbandry, toxicology, and medicine. Tangan- 

 yika also has a herbarium at Shinyanga, for collections made by 

 members of the tsetse research department. In Uganda there is 

 a botanic garden at Entebbe, which serves a useful purpose as a 

 place where plants of potential value, from either the economic or 

 decorative aspect, can be grown under observation, and distributed, 

 but this last function is now largely met by a private nursery estab- 

 lished near Nairobi. A well-stocked herbarium is attached to the 

 agricultural department at Kampala, and the forest department 



