The catalogue of DNW Auction in London for sales on July 11 described details of a copper medal with an interesting history. It shows Britannia on one side holding a scroll and on the other a laurel globe and sextant. The medal, which was sold for £160, was originally given to 150 Tanganyikan members of the Royal Geographical Society’s East Africa Expedition (1878 – 1880). The medal cost at that time £41.16 shillings and the silk cord to suspend it £12. The expedition was launched to find a feasible route from Dar es Salaam to the Central African lakes and was led by Alexander Keith Johnston. However, a few weeks after setting off from Zanzibar, he succumbed to dysentery and command of the expedition passed to another Scot, Joseph Thompson, who was only 21. The catalogue explains how Thompson’s coolness and tact were remarkable and how he successfully conducted the expedition across the desolate regions of Uhehe and Ubena to the north end of Lake Nyasa and then found a hitherto unexplored track to Lake Tanganyika. He also reached Lake Rukwa from which he marched back via Tabora to the coast at Bagamoyo before returning to London in 1880 (Thank you John Sankey for this – Editor).

The Royal Geographical Society East Africa Expedition medal

The Tanzania-Zambia Railway (Tazara) will be ‘concessioned’ by Tanzania and Zambia to a Chinese investor according to the Guardian. The two governments which have run the railway since its inception in 1976 have identified a Chinese firm with the capacity to run the 1,860 kilometre railway profitably. After lengthy discussions that took years to conclude, the two governments agreed to give it to China considering the role it had played in its construction and maintenance. Tazara has in the recent past been beset by declining profits triggered by technical problems.

Monkeys are among the most heavily studied wild animals on earth, and it is getting on for a century since a new species of them was last recognised by zoologists. The monkeys were discovered in Tanzania last year by Tim Davenport of the New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society and his colleagues.

The Kipunji monkey – photo Tim Davenport/WCS

The monkeys were originally named the ‘highland mangabey’. However, examination of their DNA and skeletons, proved that they are related to baboons of the Genus Papio, even though they do not look like baboons. As a result, the monkeys have now been assigned to a genus all of their own by the journal SCIENCE – Rungwecebus (after Mount Rungwe, where the first colonies were found) kipunji. The kipunji has pale grey-brown fur, with off-white fur on its belly. Sixteen colonies have been found in the Rungwe-Livingstone Forest and Ndundulu Forest Reserve. This is the first new genus to be identified amongst primates for 83 years. (Thank you Ron Fennell and Simon Hardwick for sending details of this from the Economist and the Times (May 12).