In Southern Nigeria, the deltaic region, the Eastern Province, virtually the whole of the Central Province, and a considerable portion of the Western Province—_i.e._, four-fifths of the whole Protectorate—may be ruled out of account as a cotton field. The deltaic region will not produce cotton. The forest belt behind it, passing (with occasional breaks) from dense to secondary growth and fading away into open country, no doubt would. But only if you cut down the forest first. To destroy the West African forest to any extent in order to grow cotton would be economic madness. Indeed, the Administration is working hard to preserve the forests from the ignorance and improvidence of primitive man, and to build up for the native communities, and in the public interest, a source of future revenue from the methodical exploitation of its inexhaustible wealth. With trifling exceptions the whole of this region is the home of the oil-palm, the most beneficent tree in the world, and such activities as the inhabitants can spare from their own requirements are given over, in the main, to the palm oil and kernel trades. It is the home of valuable cabinet woods, of vegetable oils, gums, and rubbers, and in time is likely to become a great natural nursery for the cultivation of plantation rubber and such a moisture-loving plant as the cocoa; never, I think, of cotton. In the Western Province large areas of forest have been destroyed; the population is, in a certain measure, more enterprising, and a fair amount of cotton for export may reasonably be expected, especially, I venture to suggest, if certain methods now prevalent are modified. The Egba district (1869 square miles, with a population of 260,000), the capital of which is Abeokuta, a town of about 100,000 inhabitants, is the principal but not the only centre for cotton-growing in the Western Province, and here the Association has a large and well-equipped ginnery, as it has at Ibadan and Oshogbo. Out of 2,237,370 lbs. of lint cotton exported from Southern Nigeria in 1908, Abeokuta and neighbourhood was responsible for 722,893 lbs. The Egbas are good farmers and not strangers to cotton-growing for export. The industry owes its origin there to a Manchester man, Mr. Clegg, who introduced it at the time of the American Civil War. In 1862 the export amounted to 1810 lbs., rising in 1868 to over 200,000 lbs., and continuing, I believe, at that figure or thereabouts for some years. Cotton then began to fall heavily in price, and the Egba farmer, finding no profit in growing it, turned his attention to other crops. The industry was revived on a much larger scale by the Association in 1905. The exports of cotton lint from Southern Nigeria from 1906 to 1910—_i.e._ since the Association came upon the scene—have been as follows:— 1906 2,695,923 1907 4,089,530 1908 2,237,370 1909 4,929,646 1910 2,399,857