3l8 SCIENCE IN AFRICA 



tion, since every scientifically trained member of an agricultural 

 department is potentially a research worker: those stationed as 

 district agricultural officers, among other duties, investigate 

 native custom and practice, a work which must come under the 

 designation of research. The table includes only those officers 

 engaged to investigate some special branch of agricultural science, 

 such as chemistry, botany, or entomology. 



In Northern Rhodesia the central research station of the Depart- 

 ments of Agriculture and of Animal Health at Mazabuka has con- 

 centrated during the past few years on pasture work and cover 

 crops, with maize as another important subject, but recent economy 

 measures have severely limited this work. Veterinary research at 

 Mazabuka has also been impeded by lack of funds, so that little 

 pure research could be undertaken. The veterinary research 

 officer has, however, continued his studies of helminthology. 

 Stations at Abercorn for coffee and native crops, and at Fort 

 Jameson for tobacco and native crops, have recently been opened 

 by the agricultural department, but their work has similarly been 

 handicapped, although in 1936 the appointment of an additional 

 officer made it possible to open another of these stations at Pemba. 

 The Ecological Survey of Northern Rhodesia with staff of a plant 

 ecologist and an agricultural officer, which has been referred to in 

 Chapters V and VI, has done extremely valuable work and is 

 demonstrating the importance of native agriculture as an ecological 

 factor. In addition to annual reports, the department published 

 annual bulletins with articles on the results of research from 1931 

 to 1933 when they were suspended as a measure of economy. 



In Nyasaland the headquarters of the Agricultural and Veterinary 

 departments are at Zomba, where new laboratories for the agricul- 

 tural department are just being completed and an experimental 

 area of about sixty acres is under cultivation. Research on tea 

 production is a special object of the experimental station at Mlanje, 

 which is in charge of the plant pathologist. There are experimental 

 stations for cotton, at Port Herald, and at Makwapala near Zomba, 

 the latter recently taken over from the Empire Cotton Growing 

 Corporation, which maintains a station at Domira Bay. Special 

 attention is given to tobacco, and a Native Tobacco Board, which, 

 in 1 936, employed seventeen Europeans, supervises and distributes 



