BOTANY. 219 



the much higher country of the Masai highlands 

 to the east and Karagwe hills to the west, and 

 would become like the Waganda — a people quite 

 different from any Abyssinian race and also diffe- 

 rent from the people of Ankole and Karagwe. 



Now this is what has happened to the plants of 

 the Victoria region. The country occupied by it 

 lies between 3,900 feet and 4,500 feet altitude. It 

 is a fairly dry climate, but not a desert one. The 

 rainy season is from October to April. It follows 

 from this that the plants there could not have 

 come from the Congo area, for their climate is 

 a very wet one, and their rainy season is from 

 April to October. 



Therefore we find in the Victoria region, along 

 with plants which belong to the Masai highlands 

 and the hills of the Central Watershed west of the 

 Victoria, a large number of kinds which are not 

 found elsewhere, but which are modified forms of 

 high altitude plants adapted to the special physical 

 conditions. 



Something of the same kind has occurred in the 

 twelfth area, Somaliland, and the dry thorn-tree 

 desert which passes between the coast and the 

 more rainy Masai and Ukambani highlands. The 

 droughty conditions have produced a very large 

 number of new forms which were originally settlers 

 from these moister uplands, or perhaps from the 

 Easterly Wet valleys. 



The Central Watershed, the Masai highlands, 



