1953] 



VEGETATION OF NY AS ALAND 



167 



through cultivation, and through overgrazing in some tsetse- free areas, has come 

 about largely in recent years. A big increase in population has taken place since 

 the suppression of the slave trade and the taming of the Angoni, a raiding Zulu 

 tribe, brought security to the people, and since health and social conditions have 

 been improved by actions of government and of the Christian missions. 



Total population increased from 1,293,000 in the census year of 1926 to 

 2,050,000 in the census year of 1945. The native population of 2,044,000 (1945) 

 lives by subsistence farming of maize, finger millet, cassava, beans, and lesser 

 food crops. Increasing production of tobacco, cotton, maize, etc., as native money 

 crops, throws an additional burden on the land which can be cultivated under pre- 

 sent conditions. Tea, tung, tobacco, and lesser crops grown by European plant- 

 ers occupied only about 48,000 acres of land in 1945. 



The crops of the natives are produced almost entirely by primitive hoe-and- 

 hill methods of shifting plot agriculture. Nearly all of this cultivation is carried 

 out on woodland or drier- forest soils, where the seasonal rainfall usually is ample 

 for the crops grown in the country. Through repeated disturbance for cultivation, 

 densely peopled areas have to a great extent been cleared of timber; the soil is 

 being or has already become impoverished, and on sloping land it is being carried 

 away by sheet and gully erosion. Wind erosion is also to be seen on some light 

 soils of the western plateau. In areas less densely populated, woodland condi- 

 tions often are reestablished between periods of cultivation, but in varying de- 

 gree it is a changed vegetation, and probably a long term of years is required for 

 full restoration of the ecological equilibrium. Cultivation does not always involve 

 total preliminary clearing of the land. A common practice in woodland is to fell 

 the trees at a convenient cutting level, burn the tops, and leave the stumps, 

 which in Brachystegia, for example, regenerate freely by coppice shoots. 



Topham (1936) states that some 90 per cent of the area of Nyasaland bears 

 signs of having been cultivated by the natives at some time or other. This statement 

 seems open to question. Probably 10 per cent of the land is too steep and rugged 

 for cultivation as at present practiced or indicated for the past; further areas are 

 too infertile to attract occupation, and large tracts are too remote from sources of 

 domestic water supply to be available for cropping. 



The distribution of the native population in relation to domestic water supply 

 is brought out strongly in a study made by Dixey (1928). On 1926 census figures, 

 average population density was 34.6 per square mile, but density was from no in- 

 habitants to 10 on 66 per cent of the area, and from 101 to over 200 on 8.5 per 

 cent of the area. The denser concentrations of people are along the lake shores, 

 the banks of the principal rivers, and in localities where water from springs or 

 other sources is readily available for household use and soils are good. Very ex- 

 tensive tracts of practically vacant fertile land only await provision of water from 

 wells, boreholes, or dams to bring them into use for cultivation, and thus provide 

 relief for congested areas and provide adequate living space for the rapidly grow- 

 ing native population. 



A start has been made by government in sinking wells in areas in which the 

 need is most urgent. A program to educate the natives in improved methods of 

 agriculture and in soil conservation is under way. This, however, is made slow 

 and difficult by native conservatism, the lack of chiefly authority since the early 

 breaking of the power of the big chiefs, and shortage of funds. 



The opening of new lands for native settlement will result inevitably in the 

 disturbance and alteration of vegetation now virgin as far as cultivation and graz- 

 ing by domestic animals go, and the further spread of actual deforestation. How 

 far this will, and must of necessity, be allowed to take place, and to what extent 



