INTRODUCTORY. 
3 
will bring to our knowledge another African Alp of 
mightier proportions and loftier summit destined to oust 
from his proud position the object of my recent journey, 
who, displaced from the homage of the eager geographer, 
must be content to linger still a few years longer in pos¬ 
session of the vague respect of the British schoolboy. 
Although the mass of Kilima-njaro rises rather 
abruptly from a fairly level plain, it is hardly to be 
called isolated, and indeed it may be said that an 
almost continuous chain of mountain-ranges and in¬ 
dependent peaks connect it with Abyssinia on the 
north, Natal on the south, and, possibly, also with 
the Cameroons on the west. Judged by the flora 
which clothes its higher regions, it may be almost 
regarded as the common meeting-ground of many 
forms peculiarly characteristic of these three widely 
separated mountain-districts. 
To ascertain the relationships of the fauna and flora 
of Kilima-njaro, two learned societies—the British 
Association for the Advancement of Science and the 
Boyal Society—at the instigation, I believe, of Mr. 
Sclater, the Secretary of the Zoological Society of 
London, delegated certain of their members to form 
a Kilima-njaro Expedition Committee, and funds to 
the extent of 1000k were placed at their disposal. 
The great height attained by Kilima-njaro, and the fact 
that this snow-clad mountain-mass lies in the Equa¬ 
torial zone, and exhibits an extraordinary range of 
climates on its broad slopes, were thought sufficient 
causes to give rise to or explain many curious features 
in its fauna and flora; moreover, a like condition of 
things—perpetual snow under the Equator—was only 
to be met with elsewhere in Central and South America, 
no mountains in other parts of the tropics reaching to 
b 2 
