FORESTRY I gg 



books must rest with individual officers in the departments them- 

 selves. In most territories knowledge is sufficiently advanced for 

 the purpose, and one or two handbooks have been produced, for 

 example a revision by Dale (1936) of E. Battiscombe's useful book 

 on the trees of Kenya, and Miss Steedman (1933) on the trees, 

 shrubs, and lianes of Southern Rhodesia. Lane-Poole (19 16) is 

 a comparable work on Sierra Leone, and Broun and Massey 

 (i92g), give similar information for the Sudan. In each territory 

 much remains to be done in the ecological study of the forest 

 vegetation including the relation of forest growth to soil, and in 

 stocktaking with the object of ascertaining the composition of the 

 forests and bringing them under systematic working. ' At present 

 there is little reliable information on the amount of timber avail- 

 able in each forest area, and, to obtain this, more fully trained staff 

 and a long time will be necessary. Air survey (see Chapter II) has 

 opened new possibilities recently, E.. Bourne (ig28 and 193 1), and 

 others have stressed its importance in forestry. 



Recent advances in ecology, including that of forests, have been 

 summarized in Chapter VP and the following notes refer mainly 

 to stocktaking. 



In South Africa the determination of all indigenous and intro- 

 duced forest trees is undertaken by the forest research section in 

 co-operation with the botanists of the division of plant industry, 

 and very few, if any, trees remain unidentified. In stocktaking 

 steady progress is being made by the forest management section. 

 The history of forest research in the Union has been written 

 recently by J. J. Kotze,^ chief of the forest research section. 



For Southern Rhodesia a vegetation map has been prepared, dis- 

 tinguishing the main physiognomic types. In Northern Rhodesia 

 vegetation maps based on air photographs taken over considerable 

 areas are valuable in forest stocktaking. For Nyasaland a general 

 reconnaissance of forest areas is complete, ecological investigation, 

 with soil classification as a basis, is in progress, and simple working 

 plans for village forests are being prepared. In Tanganyika the 

 vegetation is better known than in any other part of East Africa 



* A number of papers on the subject have appeared in the Empire Faustry Journal 

 and the Journal of Ecology; some of them are listed in the bibliography. 



* Unpublished memorandum. 



