WEST AFRICAN FORESTS 

 AND FORESTRY 



CHAPTER I 

 THE FORESTS OF WESTERN AFRICA 



From a large scale-map of Africa, the various British West African 

 Colonies and Protectorates, as well as Liberia, French Ivory Coast, 

 the late German Colonies of Togo and Cameroons, can be seen on tne 

 western side of that Continent. In fact, these territories are all within 

 the Tropics, and also between the latitudes of 13° North in the Gambia 

 to nearly the Equator in the Cameroons, and between longitude of 

 17° West to 10° East. Roughly speaking. Upper Guinea, as this part 

 is usually called, covers an area of 100 to 200 miles wide by a length 

 of over 1,500 miles, as a sylvan belt mainly of one type of vegetation, 

 which botanically, however, only begins to alter as the boundary of 

 the Cameroons is approached in the eastern part of Nigeria. There- 

 fore one finds several trees extending right through this area, and also 

 an almost unbroken forest all the way along the coast line, and roughly 

 100 to 150 miles inland. The width of the forest varies rather accord- 

 ing to the aspect of the coast line, because the prevalent wind being 

 south-west, the greatest rainfall, and thus the heaviest type of forest, 

 occurs when the coast line runs at right angles to the prevailing wind. 

 This occurs, for instance, near Calabar, Nigeria in the Cameroons, 

 part of the Gold Coast near Axim, and Sierra Leone near Freetown. 

 In some instances this effect is accentuated by the proximity of 

 mountains near the coast, as, for instance, north of Calabar and 

 north of Benin. One tree, which might be taken as a type, is the 

 Rhodesian Mahogany, Afzelia Africana, which is found right in 

 this belt of forest on its northern side. As the name implies, it is 

 also found in Rhodesia, near the Victoria Falls. Mahogany, Khaya 

 Senegalensis, is another tree found in the Gambia, also in Nigeria 

 right up to the Cameroon border, over 1,500 miles away. 



However, in this huge forest belt there are great variations in the 

 ramfall, from 20 to over 175 inches in the Oban Hills of Nigeria. There 

 are also, naturally, variations in soil and elevation, which make differ- 



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0, H. HILL LIBRARY 



