283 



AUBICULIDAE. 



Carychium minimum, Miill. Along the Strip. 



One of our smallest land snails. Under a lens, the eyes, which 

 are very black, may be seen even through the transparent shell. 

 Not scarce in damp places but easily overlooked on account of its 

 minute size. 



LAMELLIBRANCHIATA. 



Unionidae. 



Unio pictorum, Linn. The Lake. 



The somewhat pearly shells of this species were formerly used 

 by Dutch painters to contain their colours, hence the name 

 bestowed by Linne. Though not the Pearl Mussel, this 

 occasionally contains small pearls of inferior quality. 



XLV.-MGOA RUBBER IN BRITISH EAST AFRICA. 



{Mascarenhasia elastica, K. Sch.) 



Otto Stapf. 



Mr. E. Battiscombe, Acting Conservator of Forests at Nairobi, 

 B.E.A., communicated recently specimens of flowers and fruits of 

 a rubber tree found by him in the Shimba Hills, near Mombasa. 

 On comparison they proved to belong to Mascarenhasia elastica, K. 

 Sch., a species previously known only from the neighbourhood of 

 Dar-es-Salam, German East Africa, where it is worked occasionally 

 by the natives for a kind of ball rubber called Mgoa rubber in the 

 Zanzibar trade.' 



M 



tea 



Notizblatt 



Museum, vol. I. (1899), pp. 268-270. This is what the author says of 

 it as a rubber tree : " Between the villages of Vikindo and Mbaffu 

 there grows in moist places a robust tree which contains rubber latex 

 and yields a superior kind of caoutchouc. The trunk branches 

 usually low down and attains a height of 10 m. The pale grey 

 bark is covered with scarsfrom the knives of the rubber collectors, 

 who produce from it large balls of rubber known as Mgoa in the 

 Zanzibar trade. It is not particularly pure, containing fragments 

 of bark, etc." Samples of this rubber received at the Botanic 

 Museum, Berlin, are described by Dr. Warburg (Der Tropenjlanzer, 

 HI., p. 220) as consisting of pale brown drawn-out caoutchouc 

 threads intermixed with small particles of caoutchouc. In 1899 

 Herr Hedde, Government gardener at Dar-es-Salam, was commis- 

 sioned to explore the neighbourhood of Dar-es-Salam and to 

 study the distribution and properties of the tree. Dr. Schumann 



r^Aioueu an aostract rrom neuue s uuiwan^uiv*« - — — — - 



of the Botanic Garden and Museum at Berlin, vol. 111., p. 43. 



Mascarenhasia elastica 



29041 



c 



