304 SCIENCE IN AFRICA 



the standard of living; but before native agriculture is improved 

 we must have a sound knowledge of existing conditions. 



Such knowledge comes perhaps into the province of human 

 geography rather than of either anthropology or agriculture. In- 

 formation is being obtained from certain areas by special inquiries, 

 such as the agricultural survey of Nyasaland, the ecological survey 

 of Northern Rhodesia, the combined agricultural, geological and 

 other studies in Uganda, and in Tanganyika surveys of areas such 

 as Ukara Island and Musoma district, and Mr. Gillman's recent 

 studies of population and water-supplies, each of which is noticed 

 in other parts of this volume. In addition, however, a great mass 

 of valuable data is gathered by individual officers in administra- 

 tive, agricultural, and other departments in the course of their 

 routine duties. Much of this information is lost through the absence 

 of any central organization in which it could be collected and dis- 

 seminated. It was in the hope of filling this lack that a centralized 

 body, the Committee of the British Association on the Human 

 Geography of Intertropical Africa, was formed in 1926 at the 

 Oxford Meeting of the British Association. The committee has 

 Professor P. M. Roxby as Chairman and Professor A. G. Ogilvie 

 as Secretary. A list of questions, together with two model essays 

 on the relation of African tribes to their environment (those of 

 P. L. Martrou on the Fang and R. U. Sayce on the Basuto), was 

 circulated in pamphlet form to the governments of British colonial 

 Africa. 



In Northern Rhodesia the administration invited all officials to 

 reply to the questionnaire, and thirty reports have been contri- 

 buted, covering every district except two. Several of these reports 

 have been edited and published in the pages of Geography, and Pro- 

 fessor Ogilvie (1934) devoted his presidential address to the Geo- 

 graphical Section of the British Association to the subject. He 

 pointed out that in the absence of accurate maps showing topo- 

 graphy, geology, soils, and vegetation, the results cannot attain 

 proper significance. Accordingly guesswork must play an impor- 

 tant part in relating the distribution, habits, and particularly the 

 agriculture of tribes to the physical environment. The physical 

 conditions of Northern Rhodesia are similar in many respects to 

 those of the adjoining region of Katanga, so that the fine series of 



