12 NOETH-EAST AFEICA. 



and the distribution of its inhabitants has also been determined almost exclusively 

 by the climatic conditions, depending everywhere on the abundance of rain and 

 vegetation. 



Flora and Fauna. 



In its flora and fauna, as well as its climate and geology, North Africa belongs 

 to the zone of transition between Europe and Asia. The apparent unity imparted 

 to the continent by its compact form is not realised when we examine in detail the 

 phenomena of life. Cyrenaica and the whole Mauritanian seaboard on the slope of 

 the Atlas range belong to the vegetable domain of the Mediterranean, in which 

 are also comprised Spain, Provence, Italy, the Balkan peninsula, the shores of 

 Asia Minor, and Syria. The zone of the Sahara, which stretches under the Tropic 

 of Cancer across the continent, is continued in Arabia to the Persian Gulf, and 

 even through some of their rarer species embraces the Baluchistan coast, Thar, the 

 Rann, and the Kathyawar peninsula in India. Lastly, the floras of Yemen and 

 Hadramaut resemble those of Sudan, the narrow Eed Sea having been easily 

 traversed by African species. 



For the whole continent, the characteristic vegetable zone is that of Sudan and 

 the equatorial regions, which stretches from sea to sea, and from desert to desert, 

 between the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, between the Sahara and Kalahari. 

 Speaking broadly, it is much poorer in distinct species than the other tropical 

 regions, such as India and the Sunda Islands, and even than some sub-tropical 

 lands, such as Asia Minor. Nevertheless certain central districts in Africa 

 possess a remarkable variety of plants, as for instance, the territory watered by the 

 Diiir, not far from the dividing line between the Nile and Congo basins. Here 

 Schweinfurth collected in five months nearly seven hundred flowering species, 

 which it would be impossible to do in the richest European lands. 



Most of the African tropical domain is exposed to the periodical rains, with 

 long intervening periods of dryness. Hence arborescent vegetation nowhere 

 displays greater exuberance and vigour than on the plains between the Congo and 

 Nile, where the streams often disappear amid dense masses of foliage, and in the 

 neighbourhood of the Bight of Benin, which enjoys far more humidity than the 

 interior. A large extent of the zone of the Sudan is occupied by prairies, although 

 some tracts are so overgrown with graminaceous and other herbs that animals 

 refuse to penetrate into them. In the Nile marsh lands, certain andropogonous 

 varieties have non-woody stalks over twenty feet high, affording to the giraffe 

 cover from the hunter. The various graminaceous plants of Central Africa are not 

 intermingled like those of the European fields, and tracts several hundred square 

 miles in extent are sometimes occupied by a single species. 



Thorny plants are relatively very abundant in the forests of the Sudan, and after 

 clearances the trees appear not to spring up so rapidly in this zone as in South 

 America. Varieties of the palm family are ten times more numerous in Asia and 

 America than in Africa, which has consequently a wider range for its prevailing 

 species. The equatorial regions of other continents have scarcely any cocoa-nut 



