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



velopments were usually in the more sheltered hollows. In the aggregate they 

 much exceeded the area of primary forest. 



Plant collections from upper parts of the escarpment and the plateau of Nyika 

 amounted to 215 numbers. 



Kasungu. Kasungu is at an altitude of about 3,400 feet on the western plateau 

 highlands, approximately midway between Lake Nyasa and the Northern Rhodesian 

 border, and about 16 miles north of the permanently flowing Bua River on the 

 North Road. A government station and trading center are surrounded by numerous 

 native villages on a tract of fertile red lands, some square miles in area, around 

 which the soils are generally grey and sandy and covered with monotonous wood- 

 lands of the Bracbystegia type. About 1% miles to the west, rocky, granitic 

 Kasungu Hill rises about 1,000 feet above the plain. 



This was chiefly a mammal collecting locality for our party. Conditions 

 were too dry for profitable botanical collecting when I spent five days there 

 late in August, and most of the country had recently been burned. Clearing and 

 cultivation had greatly altered the original vegetation. The area of better soils 

 had perhaps been occupied by Bracbystegia-Combre turn- Acacia woodland. Shady 

 Combretum mecbowianum O. Hoffm., Kigelia pinnata (J acq.) DC, and Parinari 

 mbola Oliv. trees, about the villages, seemed to be relics of the original vegeta- 

 tion on the superior soils. 



The existing woodlands appeared in large part to be second growths on 

 lands less productive to the natives, but formerly cultivated. On stiff soils of 

 stream flats a deciduous Acacia, leafless when I saw it, grew gregariously in 

 stands about 50 feet high. Elsewhere, in stands of mixed composition, 15 to 30 

 feet high, Bracbystegia boehmii Taub. was the principal tree in association with 

 Isoberlinia paniculata (Benth.) Hutch., Terminalia sericea Burch., Diplorrhynchus 

 condylocarpon (Muell. Arg.) Pichon, Combretum zeyberi Sond., and lesser species 

 including four of Strycbnos (S. pungens Solerad., S. schurmanniana Gilg, S. in~ 

 nocua Del., 5". cf. lokua A. Rich.). The bunched grass cover on unburned ground 

 was 4-8 feet tall and occupied less than 50 per cent of the soil surface. Apart 

 from a few green shoots of grass springing from the burnt ground, the yellow 

 flower clusters of leafless Cassia singueana Del., the yellow flowerheads of 

 ubiquitous Helichrysum kirkii Oliv. et Hiern,and the white of Vernonia amygdalina 

 Del., provided about the only touches of fresh color in the whole dreary landscape. 



Rain forest elements formed brushy growths of small trees, and scrambling 

 shrubs such as Jasminum fluminense Veil, and Canthium zanzibaricum Klotz., 

 narrowly edging the banks of dry streams in the woodlands. On the rockier 

 parts of Kasungu Hill a dry, partially deciduous brush of low trees and tall 

 shrubs contained *Rhus 17451, Heeria reticulata (Bak. f.) Engl., Boscia corym- 

 bosa Gilg, Vernonia polyura O. Hoffm., Ficus sonderi Miq., and, most conspicu- 

 ously, an arborescent columnar Euphorbia resembling E. ingens. 



Searching in this locality for identifiable plants yielded only 58 numbers, about 

 50 per cent of which were in flower and the rest in fruit. 



Chia. The Chia is defined geographically as the lake plains part of the 

 drainage area of five small rivers, the Lifuliza, heading on Nchisi Mountain, 

 the Matamango, Likoa, Luvi, and Mambara, which in the rainy season empty their 

 waters into Chia Lagoon, a quiet western bay of Lake Nyasa some few miles south 

 of Kota-kota, or into the lake between the lagoon and the Chia River. The papyrus 

 and reed-fringed lagoon is an important fishing place in the southeast season, 

 when the waters of the open lake often become too rough for the crude, clumsy 

 dugout canoes of the native fishermen. 



