The total value of these five years’ output amounts to something like £350,000. It is entirely creditable to the Association that it should have been instrumental in reviving a decayed industry in one district and creating one in others, and in five years to have fathered an export of cotton to so considerable an amount. I found the best-informed opinion in Southern Nigeria imbued with the belief that the 1911 crop will be a poor one, though better than last year’s, but that the prospects for the crop of 1912 are good. The newly opened ginnery at Oshogbo is said to be doing well. The ginnery at Oyo, however, is apparently lying idle. At any rate, it had done nothing, I was there informed, ever since it was put up, some four years ago. A good deal seems to have been spent upon the experimental plantation at Ibadan, with indifferent results. It has now been taken over by the Government, whose officers, I was informed, found it in a very neglected condition. Personally, I do not attach, in a sense unfavourable to the growth of the industry, much importance to the drop in the output. The field, it must always be remembered, is small, the entire Western Province being only 27,640 miles square, and much of it, as already stated, covered with forest. In West Africa new industries are always liable to violent fluctuations. The drop in the maize export is much more considerable than the falling off in cotton. Unfavourable seasons, too much rain or too little, late sowing, and other considerations play a determining part in these matters. Things move very slowly in West Africa as a rule. The cotton crop is not the easiest to handle. Compared with ground nuts, for instance, it entails a great deal more time and trouble. All kinds of obstacles have to be encountered and overcome which people at home have difficulty in fully appreciating. The experimental stage of any enterprise, especially in a place like West Africa, is bound to leave openings for error, and error in West Africa is a costly luxury. The Protectorate is under considerable obligations to the Association for the good work it has done and is doing.