UGANDA FINDS

Evening Star, Issue 22047, 5 June 1935, Page 12

UGANDA FINDS

ENGLISH PLANTS AT 13,000 FEET Last September two scientists from the Natural History Museum, South Kensington—Dr F. W. Edwards (entomologist) and Oi George Taylor (botanist) —quietly left England for Uganda to collect plants and insects in the mountains. They are now back in the Museum to tell what they had seen and found. They have brought back 50 cases of flora and fauna, the exact value of which will not bo known until the scientists have more carefully examined them. But they tell of a new Uganda, so developed that it is possible to travel across it almost anywhere along good roads at 40 miles an hour. With 50 porters and native guides carrying the stores, they climbed the Ruwenzori Range and other ranges of similar altitudes, On the top of some of them they collected many specimens of the everlasting type of flowers, some resembling the daisy family, and some fine specimens of the gimt lobelia and the giant groundsel. “ Some of these groundsel are trees 15ft to 20ft high,’’ said Dr Edwards, “and 2ft or 3ft in diameter. WINGLESS FLIES. - “ Wo also obtained a large collection of insects, butterflies, and wingless flies which abound in most mountainous regions.' Where there is much wind the fly frequently loses its wings.- Among the mountain insects, at heights, of about 13.000 ft, wa found the same types as are found in temperate climes in England. “We also found various British plants on the mountains, but not in the plains beneath.” The scientists climbed three" extinct volcanoes. In the bamboo forests they discovered two new species of mosquitoes. A caterpillar bores holes in the bamboo stem Which _ admit water, and mosquito larvae breed in the water. They also found a new white frog. Ono of the greatest thrills was after Christmas dinner, on the top of the Ruwenzori Mountains, when the scientists, after turkey and tinned Christmas pudding, switched on their portable wireless set. Atmospherics were bad at 13,000 ft, and time had been miscalculated. But the lonely party heard the last four words of the King’s broadcast from Sandringham: “ God bless you all.” The Natural History Museum is planning another expedition, this time to Abyssinia, to bo led by Dr Hugh Scott and Mr A. H. G. Alston.