170 MEMOIRS OF THE NEW YORK BOTANICAL GARDEN [Vol. 8, No. 3 



Livingstone in 1861-1862. These important collections, made by John (afterwards 

 Sir John) Kirk and J. C. Meller, were transmitted to Kew. Burkill (1897), in listing 

 the plants known from "British Central Africa" up to near the end of the century, 

 gave the names of no less than 19 collectors, other than Kirk and Meller, who col- 

 lected in localities in Nyasaland and sent their specimens to Kew. The most im- 

 portant of these collections were the work of John Buchanan (990 species), Alex- 

 ander Whyte (500 species), and G. F. Scott-Elliot (246 species, including collec- 

 tions from the *'Nyasa-Tanganyika Plateau"). 



Additional knowledge of the flora has been gained through a considerable 

 number of more recent collections of varying importance, some made by foresters 

 and other government officers, some by private individuals, and deposited prin- 

 cipally in herbaria in Britain, and at Pretoria and Amani. An herbarium of ligneous 

 plants is maintained by the Forestry Department at Zomba, capital of Nyasaland. 

 Among the largest of the recent collections may be mentioned those of J. Bum 

 Davy, made on the Imperial Forestry Institute Expedition of 1929, and collections 

 made mostly on the Shire Highlands by Mrs. C. W. Benson and sent to Pretoria. 



Knowledge of the flora of the higher mountains, before our expedition, appears 

 to have rested mainly in collections from Mlanje Mountain made by Alexander 

 Whyte in 1891 (Britten et al., 1894), and unpublished collections from the same 

 mountain made by P. J. Green way in 1941 and A. P. T. Forbes in 1942. The 

 Greenway and Forbes collections were deposited at Amani (removed to Nairobi in 

 1950), and duplicates of the former were sent to Kew and Pretoria. 



ITINERARY 



The Vernay Expedition was planned to pay special attention to the higher 

 mountains on both sides of the Great Rift Valley. An extensive system of dirt 

 roads, some of them all-weather motor roads, others passable only in the dry 

 season, made all parts of the country that we wished to visit easily accessible, 

 at least to the lower slopes of the mountains. Sufficient numbers of local natives 

 were available for porter transport to the higher altitudes. Other native Africans, 

 employed as field assistants and camp servants for the duration of the expedition, 

 proved themselves cheerful and for the most part reasonably energetic and ef- 

 ficient helpers. 



A l/^-ton truck, and camp gear and collecting supplies, were shipped in ad- 

 vance from New York to Beira, in Portuguese East Africa, and railed thence to 

 Blantyre, on the Shire Highlands in southern Nyasaland. Captain Shortridge, with 

 two cplored assistants, Nicholas Arend and Matthew Swarz, traveled from South 

 Africa to Blantyre by rail, bringing their equipment by that route. Mr. Vernay, Dr. 

 Anthony and I flew by commercial airlines from New York to Blantyre, where we 

 met Captain Shortridge on May 20. 



A small amount of collecting was done on the Shire Highlands while organi- 

 zational arrangements were being made at Blantyre, chief commercial center of 

 the Protectorate, and at Zomba, the seat of government. On May 27, our first field 

 base was established at an elevation of about 5,000 feet on Zomba Plateau. A 

 narrow, zigzag road, about six miles long, climbing from Zomba town to the edge 

 of the plateau, had been made unsafe by a landslide, and transport for half the 

 distance was by native carriers. Returning to Blantyre on June 11, we did some 

 further collecting there during a spell of chiperoni weather which interrupted our 

 planned itinerary. 



On June 19 we moved by road a distance of 41 miles to the lower western 

 slopes of Mlanje Mountain, and established a collecting and transport base at a 

 timber depot of the Forestry Department, at an altitude of about 2,750 feet in the 



