208 
BRITISH CENTRAL AFRICA 
on the whole much more clothed with vegetation than is East Africa, North- 
Central or South Africa. 
Flowering plants and trees are either much more abundant or, owing to the 
less dense vegetation, much more apparent than in West Africa. Perhaps there 
are not colour displays quite as gorgeous as the evanescent sheets of bloom to 
be met with in Temperate North or South Africa, but then the show of flowers 
is not confined to a few weeks in the year, but is pretty constant throughout all 
the twelve months. Of course there is a marked bursting into bloom at the 
beginning of yearly rains and again in the benign 
autumn when the violence of the rainy season 
is over and yet the soil is still moist. 
I have not been able 
to understand (as I have 
mentioned in a preced¬ 
ing chapter) why certain 
naturalists have spread 
abroad the impression 
that singing birds, sweet 
smelling flowers and gor¬ 
geous displays of bloom 
are practically confined 
to the temperate regions 
and are not characteristic 
of the Tropics. No doubt 
these impressions were 
formed from an exclusive 
lissochilus orchids acquaintance with the 
dense forests of Tropical 
America and Malaya, where, just as in West Africa, (owing to the pre¬ 
ponderating gloomy forest) there is an immense display of foliage varied 
by no more than an occasional flower or spray of blossoms. And however 
wonderful the orchids of these regions may be, they rarely grow in sufficient 
numbers or near enough to the purview of the human eye to constitute a 
blaze of colour. But no one who has kept his eyes open in the drier regions 
of Central Africa can refuse to acknowledge that the flower displays are marked 
and very gorgeous, especially in that part of the country which lies a thousand 
feet and more above sea level. In the swamps and on the low-lying land it is 
possible to pass through the country seeing little sign of any flowers during 
certain months of the year ; though here, again, the traveller, to be consistent 
