CLIMATE 31 



In describing the Great Congo forest, which may be 

 baken as the type of the West African wet-zone forest, 

 I Stanley * says : 



" Imagine the whole of France and the Iberian 

 peninsula closely packed with trees varying from 20 

 to 180 feet high, whose crowns of foliage interlace and 

 prevent any view of sky and sun, and each tree from 

 a few inches to 4 feet in diameter. Then from tree 

 to tree run cables from 2 inches to 15 inches in 

 diameter, up and down, in loops and festoons and W's 

 | and badly-formed M's ; fold them round the trees in 

 great coils until they have run up the entire height, 

 like endless anacondas, let them flower and leaf 

 luxuriantly, and mix up above with the foliage of 

 the trees to hide the sun, then from the highest branches 

 let fall the ends of the cables, reaching to near the 

 ground by hundreds with frayed extremities, for these 

 represent the air-roots of the Epiphytes. . . . Where 

 the forest is compact as described above, we may not 

 do more than cover the ground closely with a thick 

 crop of phrynia and amoma, and dwarf bush ; but if 

 the lightning, as frequently happens, has severed the 

 crown of a proud tree, and let in the sunlight ... or 

 a tornado has been uprooting a few trees, then the 

 race for air and light has caused a multitude of baby 

 trees to rush upward crowded, crushing, and treading 

 upon and strangling one another until the whole is 

 one impervious bush." 



This picturesque description is confirmed by later 

 forest reports, 2 which show that where the typical virgin 

 forest, unfortunately destroyed in many places, is still 

 to be found, the overhead cover is so dense that the 

 floor of the forest is not crowded w r ith low growth, and 

 that this type of forest differs in this respect from the 

 forests of the moist zone in Asia or America. From 

 these same reports we gather that, except for a few 



1 Darkest Africa, vol. ii. 



2 Report on Forest Administration in South Nigeria for 1906, and Report on 

 Forests of the Gold Coast, both by N. H. Thompson, Conservator of Forests. 



