﻿Unmapped Areas on Eartlis Surface. 437 



found a fauna wliicli seems to afford a key to the past 

 history of the centre of the continent, a fauna which, Mr. 

 Moore maintains, is essentially of a salt-water type. Mr. 

 Moore, I believe, is inclined to maintain that the ancient 

 connection of this part of Africa with the ocean was 

 not by the west, as Joseph Thomson surmised, but by the 

 north, through the Great Eift valley of Dr. Gregory, and 

 lie strongly advocates the^ careful examination of Lake 

 Kudolf as the crucial test of his tlieory. It is to be 

 hoped that he or some one equally competent will have an 

 opportunity of carrying out an investigation likely to 

 provide results of the highest importance. 



CLIMATE OF THE COUNTKY. 



But there are other special problems connected with 

 this, the most backward and the most repellent of 

 continents, which demand serious investigation — problems 

 essentially geographical. One of the most important of 

 these, from the point of view of the development of Africa, 

 is the problem of acclimatization. The matter is of such 

 prime importance that a committee of the Association has 

 been at work for some years collecting data as to the 

 climate of tropical Africa. In a general way we know 

 that that climate is hot and the rainfall scanty ; indeed, 

 even the geographers of the ancient world believed that 

 Central Africa was uninhabitable on account of its heat ; 

 but science requires more than generalities, and therefore 

 we look forward to the exact results which are being 

 collected by the committee referred to with much hope. 

 We can only go to work experimentally until we know 

 precisely what we have to deal with. It will help us 

 greatly to solve the problem of acclimatization when 

 we have the exact factors that go to constitute the climate 

 of tropical Africa. At present there is no doubt that the 

 weight of competent opinion — that is, opinion of those 

 who have had actual experience of African climate and of 



