There are many fine fruits in Brazil, unrecognized abroad, which may some day, with refrigerating spaces in outgoing vessels multiplied, find a way to international tables; there is already a pineapple export to Europe, arriving in time for Christmas, and Brazil’s sweet bananas are shipped to the Plate. But who realizes that Brazil is the native home of the finest oranges in the world? Bahia is the place of origin of the seedless orange; slips of this tree, taken to California, have created a tremendous daughter industry whose products are spread far and wide by steamer and train; there is no export from Brazil, the Bahian orange, which is greatly superior in size and flavour to the Californian, hardly creeping down the coast to the markets of Rio and São Paulo. There is room for a huge industry in growing and shipping in this direction, and some of the planters of California, trembling of nights when the frosts come and smudges have to be burnt—sometimes in vain, would do well to transfer their skill and energy to a land where frosts are unknown, land is cheap, and the best oranges known are produced without any great care or science. MINING Brazil was for more than a hundred years after the discovery of placer deposits in the interior the source of important gold exports; altogether she is estimated to have yielded gold worth more than a hundred million pounds sterling, but her fame diminished with the exhaustion of the gold-bearing river sands. It was easy enough to wash out gold grains with the _bateia_, but when it became necessary to seek mother lodes and to use machinery, native capital and technical skill were lacking. Two gold-mining companies are working today in Brazil, both British owned and operated, and both in the State of Minas Geraes. One, at Morro Velho, property of the S. João del Rey Mining Company, is worked at a depth of a mile and a quarter, pays dividends regularly, and is a standing tribute to British energy and skill: it is a magnificent social organization as well as an engineering triumph. The second company of importance using modern equipment is that of Passagem, close to the old capital of Minas Geraes, Ouro Preto; it is excellently operated, but has not had equal good fortune with the Morro Velho mine. In 1916 Brazil’s gold exports, in bars, weighed 4,564,523 grams, were worth about £480,000, and went entirely to England, but Brazil subsequently forbade gold exports, and now takes over all the product. A certain amount of Brazilian gold is absorbed internally every year by the excellent native goldsmiths, for the fabrication of special jewellery objects, but no estimate of the value is obtainable.