Every few months an Inspector was supposed to visit these areas, but as this official usually had an area of about 25,000 square miles under his control, he was seldom able to visit more than one centre every year. Badly paid, with little allowance for provisions, this man usually responded to the warm hospitality of his planter host, and generally did not make exhaustive inquiries into the rubber planting. On one occasion such an inspector visited a district after the Agent had gone to Europe, in order to “check” the trees and vines before the new Agent arrived to take over the stock and plantations. He asked me if I could direct him to one plantation of 60,000 trees and vines of which he possessed a neatly drawn chart. I could only direct him to where the plantation was supposed to exist, and he immediately set off on what I hinted was a useless journey, and as I expected returned in the afternoon without having discovered a single vine! Apart from these paper plantations there are certainly several millions of rubber trees in the Congo, and every species almost has been tried. At one time the Belgian tax-payer was told that the Manihot Glaziovii was going to provide fabulous returns, but when the floods came and the winds blew, the spreading Manihots caught the force of the elements and toppled over in all directions like ninepins. The Funtumia was then going to save the Congo from financial disaster, but the “borers” took a fancy to the tree and this, coupled with the fact that in the Congo the Funtumia yields but little rubber, all serious attempts at the extension of Funtumia have been abandoned. Hopes are now being centred upon the Hevea Braziliensis, but though many of these trees are of ten years’ growth the yield is equally disappointing. In German Cameroons rubber planting is being pushed forward mainly with the Funtumia and Hevea varieties. In Portuguese West Africa hopes are centred upon Manihot and Funtumia. The best that can be said of the rubber cultivation in West Africa is that it has not yet passed the experimental stage, and that there is some promise of success in the Gold Coast and Southern Nigeria. [Sidenote: RUBBER COMPETITION]