334 
THE KILIM A NJARO EXPEDITION. 
Ferns cease to be found at a greater altitude than 
13,000 odd feet. The giant heaths above that altitude 
give place to smaller species, the vegetation generally 
becomes more and more stunted, and therefore the 
strange Senecios look the stranger from their towering 
in solitary grandeur above the lowly herbs. But after 
an altitude of 14,000 feet is passed they are also absent 
from the scene; then one is left with a few artemisias 
(southernwood), heaths, and everlasting flowers, until 
at length they too disappear, and there remain little 
red and greenish lichens, expanses of yellow sand, lead- 
coloured rocks, black boulders, and snow. 
Taking into consideration the fact that the region 
of Kilima-njaro is volcanic, and therefore probably 
geologically modern, it must be evident that the main 
features of its vegetation are of no great antiquity. 
It is therefore an interesting problem as to which of 
the two floras —the South African or the Abyssinian 
—was the first to reach the chilly regions round its 
snow-clad peaks. It is also as yet an undecided 
question as to which flora is the advancing one; 
whether the Cape forms are slowly penetrating north¬ 
ward, some of them reaching Abyssinia, some of them 
arrested on the heights of Kilima-njaro, and marking 
a return flow of the vegetation (and possibly of the 
fauna also) of Southern Africa, or whether the great 
invasion of Northern forms which have so largely 
contributed in later epochs to the modern fauna and 
flora- of Tropical Africa is still going on. Whilst Cape 
genera and species of plants penetrate to Abyssinia, 
Abyssinian forms have reached the Zambesi highlands 
and the Drakensberg Mountains. 
Th e flora of the higher regions of Kilima-njaro is 
almost equally divided in its affinities between Abyssinia 
