the rum and molascuit go to England, and the molasses to Holland and Portuguese possessions. The lands on the coast and on the river banks up to the sand hills are of marked fertility, and can produce almost any tropical vegetable or fruit. Cultivation, however, save on the sugar, coffee and cocoa estates, and by a few exceptional small farmers, is carried on in a haphazard and half-hearted manner, and the problem of agricultural development is one of great difficulty for the government. Much of the privately-owned land is not beneficially occupied, and in many cases it is not possible even to learn to whom it belongs, and though there are vast tracts of uncultivated crown land where a large farm or a small homestead can be easily and cheaply acquired, the difficulties involved in clearing, draining, and in some cases of protecting it by dams, are prohibitive to all but the exceptionally determined. Prospecting for gold began in 1880, and from 1884 to 1893-1894 the output, chiefly from alluvial workings, increased from 250 oz. to nearly 140,000 oz. annually. The industry then received a serious check by the failure of several mines, and for nearly a decade was almost entirely in the hands of the small tributor, known locally as a pork-knocker. There has been some revival, chiefly due to foreign enterprise. At Omai on the Essequibo river a German syndicate worked a large concession on the hydraulic process of placer mining with considerable success, and more recently took to dredging on its flats. In the Puruni (a tributary of the Mazaruni) American capitalists, working the Peters' mine, have established their workings to a considerable depth, besides constructing a road, 60 m. in length, from Kartabo point, at the confluence of the Guyuni and Mazaruni, to the Puruni river opposite the mine. An English syndicate started dredging in the Conawarook, a tributary of the Essequibo. The principal gold districts are on the Essequibo and its tributaries--the chief being the Cuyuni, Mazaruni, Potaro and Conawarook--and on the Barima, Barama and Waini rivers in the north-west district. There have been smaller workings, mostly unsuccessful, in the Demerara and Berbice rivers. Diamonds and other precious stones have been found in small quantities, and since 1900 efforts have been made to extend the output, nearly 11,000 carats weight of diamonds being exported in 1904. But though the small stones found were of good water, the cost of transport to the diamond fields, on the Mazaruni river, was heavy, and after 1904 the industry declined. Laws dealing with gold and precious stones passed in 1880, 1886 and 1887, and regulations in 1899, were codified in 1902 and amended in 1905.