DIVISION INTO ZONES 301 



Bay and Loanda the temperature is lower than 

 at corresponding points of latitude on the east 

 coast of Africa. 



Angola, in fact, might be described from the 

 point of view of climate, if not of geography, as 

 subtropical rather than tropical, and a northerly 

 extension of South Africa rather than the 

 southern limit of the West African coast. 



Some seventy years ago the great botanist 

 Welwitsch, who had studied and catalogued the 

 plant life of Angola, divided this colony for botani- 

 cal descriptions into three zones. This division, 

 which is used when speaking of the vegetation of 

 Angola, is also a convenient one to make when 

 describing the climate and geological features of 

 the country. 



The first of these zones or regions is the coastal ' 

 belt, from 20 to 120 miles wide, and from sea-level 

 to 1000 feet in height, which is largely formed of 

 limestone hills parallel to the coast, and with a 

 limy soil except where covered with alluvium, 

 which has a mean temperature of 70 to 80 F., 1 

 varying from 69 at Mossamedes to 85 at Cabinda, 

 and a rainfall average of 10 inches (from 30 inches 

 north of the Congo to 1 inch or less below Mossa- 

 medes in the south). 



The second is that of the lower western wood- 

 land plateaux, with an altitude of 1000 to 2500 

 feet, where the crystalline rocks are a prominent 

 feature, and the soil is richer, and has a mean 

 temperature of 65 to 85, and rainfall which 



