The two principal articles of import at present are cotton goods and salt. The articles of export are shea-nuts or butter, dressed and dyed goat and sheep skins, ostrich feathers, rubber, ground-nuts, gum arabic, hides, gum copal, beeswax, various kinds of oil-beans, cotton, and a fibre resembling, and equal in value to, jute. Tin and other minerals stand, of course, in a different category, and cannot be regarded as “trade.” Of these I formed the opinion that a very large future expansion in the shea-nut trade and ground-nut trade may be legitimately expected. I rode for days through woods of shea, and I found these trees growing abundantly all over the parts of the Niger Province and Zaria Province I visited, and in many parts of the Kano Province. The ground-nut is already cultivated, its cultivation is easy, and the soil in many districts along the Baro-Kano railway is suitable. I see no reason why that railway should not, in parts, and in time, attract to itself a population of ground-nut cultivators, as the Dakar-St. Louis railway has done, and the new Thiès-Kayes railway is doing in Senegal. The industry is at present handicapped because the merchants will not buy the undecorticated nut, and the price offered to the native is not sufficiently attractive to induce him to go to the great labour involved in decortication. Seeing that the Niger ground-nut fetches much higher prices than the Senegal and Gambia nut, it is astonishing that the merchant is not prepared to deal with the nut himself, and to purchase the undecorticated article from the native. The present policy strikes one as short-sighted.