CHAPTER VIII. 
BOTANY 
T HAT botany plays a very important part in British Central Africa north 
of the Zambezi will be plain to the most unobservant traveller. It does 
not take the first rank in popular interest, as in West Africa, for vegetable 
growth is less marvellous and fantastic than in the hot rainy countries along the 
West Coast belt and in the Congo Basin. Zoology, perhaps, has the first claim 
on the attention of the naturalist in South Central Africa ; still botany comes 
in as a good second ; for all this district (as I have incidentally pointed out in a 
previous chapter) is a kind of secondary development of the forest region ; it is 
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FLOWERS OF THE GARDENIA TREE 
