A French Expedition to the Cameroon Mountains

Abstract

IN the summer of 1939 the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle de Paris, the Comité de la France d'Outre Mer du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, and the International Institute of Volcanology, in full accord with the British Museum (Natural History), sent a scientific expedition to the volcanic mountains of the Cameroons. This expedition consisted of B. Gèze, geologist, P. Lepesme, entomologist, A. Villers, assistant taxidermist, and myself, entomologist. We were to study the biological conditions prevailing on the principal mountains of the Cameroonian range, and we visited Mt. Cameroon (4,070 m.), Mt. N'Lonako (1,800 m.), Mt. Manengouba (2,400 m.), and Mt. Bambouto (2,600 m.). From a climatic point of view, it appears that the rainfall decreases regularly from more than 10 m. a year to about 2 m. a year from the first to the last of the above-named mountains. Together with this decrease in rainfall, human settlements and cattle increase in number and importance. As a consequence, Mt. Cameroon bears a belt of rain-forest from about 1,000 m. to about 2,000 m.; this forest belt is still extant on Mt. N'Lonako, while on both Manengouba and Bambouto the belt has been broken to pieces and the prairie of the surrounding highland plains goes right to the summit. This breaking up of the forest must be rather recent, as in the Bambouto prairie we found isolated plants of tree-ferns and Clematis, both inhabiting the surviving forest patches on the same mountains.