The Industrial Paraguay, with a capital of $5,000,000, is said to export about 75 per cent of the total. This Company holding a property of 8400 square miles, was the first to undertake on a considerable scale the cultivation of _yerba mate_ in plantations. Their largest is in the north at Nueva Germania on the River Acaray. Barthe and Company, with a property of 3000 square miles, has a plantation near Nacunday on the Paraná River with 1,400,000 trees producing, and 1,000,000 more immature. The plantations of 28,000 acres will soon supply 5,700,000 pounds a year. _Mate_ sold in 1918 at 8-10 cents a pound. In that year cultivated trees produced 6,700,000 pounds, and the natural 17,200,000 pounds. _Chatas_, flat boats, carry the dried leaves down stream to river ports where they are taken by steamers to Asunción, Posadas, Corrientes, or Buenos Aires to be ground. The Industrial has two ports on the Paraná and one on the Acaray, with mills in Asunción, Corrientes, and Buenos Aires. La Matte Larangeira, a Brazilian Company, has some _yerbales_ in North Paraguay, but more in Matto Grosso. Ten to twelve million persons in South America drink _mate_, though tea and coffee are more fashionable in the large cities. Its use was spreading in Europe before the War, but few persons in the United States are acquainted with its virtues. Containing less tannin, it is more healthful than tea or coffee, is soothing to the nervous system, and beneficial to digestion unless taken to excess. When used instead of food it becomes injurious. It is much drunk on the plains of Argentina, counteracting the effects of an excessive meat diet. It may be made like tea, but in its native haunts, the powder is put into a gourd called a _mate_, boiling water is poured on, and after steeping the liquid is drunk with a _bombilla_, a tube ending in an oval ball, with small holes to admit the liquid, but supposed to keep out the _yerba_. AGRICULTURE =Tobacco=, largely cultivated in Paraguay, is the most important agricultural product with the first place in foreign trade. Almost every one smokes large cigars, even women and girls. The leaves are divided into seven classes: the first class called _pito_ containing 2¹⁄₂ per cent of nicotine, the seventh class 7 per cent. The first four classes are used in Europe as fillers, the last three in Argentina as wrappers, having larger, stronger leaves. The tobacco is mainly from Havana seed introduced in 1900. The leaves are dried and fermented, and made into various types of cigars, or shipped in crude form to Europe, formerly the most to Germany, later to France and Spain. Of one crop of 7000 tons 4000 went to Europe, there sold under different names. In Argentina and Uruguay the cigars and cigarettes are popular under the name of Paraguay.