is not money making, but the establishment in our oversea dependencies of an Imperial cotton industry calculated in the course of time to relieve Lancashire, in whole or in part, of her dangerous dependence on American speculators. The other point which those responsible for the management of the Association might conceivably think over, is one that impressed me in Northern Nigeria when inspecting the beautifully kept cotton plantations in the Kano and Zaria provinces. I was later on to find that it was one upon which very strong, though not unanimous, opinions were held by persons of experience and judgment in the Southern Protectorate. A great deal of energy, and doubtless money too, is apparently expended by the Association in experimenting with and distributing seeds of non-indigenous varieties of cotton. Now, although one cannot say without careful cultivation, speaking of the north, one can at least say without perpetually improving scientific cultivation extending over a century, Nigeria is able to produce indigenous cotton, fetching to-day 1¼_d._, 2_d._, and even 3_d._ per lb. above “middling American.” Does not this fact constitute the strongest of pleas for concentrating upon the improvement of the indigenous varieties instead of distributing effort by worrying about the introduction of exotics? If these indigenous plants, without a century’s scientific care, can produce cotton superior in value to “middling American,” what could they not do with a tithe of the attention which has been lavished upon the industry in the States? I know the experts will argue that the indigenous varieties make a lot more wood, and that an acre planted with American varieties will yield much more lint than an acre planted with a Nigerian variety. Not being an expert I would not venture to dispute this. All that I would make bold to query would be whether experiments tending to prove it have in Nigeria been sufficiently continuous and carried out under conditions of fairness to the indigenous cotton sufficiently conclusive to place the matter beyond the pale of discussion. Even if this were so, I am not sure that it could be taken as an irrefutable reply to the contention I have ventured to put forward. For, on the other side, must be reckoned the diseases which invariably attack all exotics, animal, vegetable, and human, introduced into the West African forest region. At every halt on my trek from Riga-Chikum to Kano, a matter of twelve days, wherever I saw cotton plantations, and often enough at points on the road, I made it my business whenever practicable to put a number of questions to the Sarikis (chiefs) and to individual farmers on the subject of cotton-growing. I always prefaced these questions with an assurance that I did not belong to the Government and that I was not a commercial man, but merely a Mallam (I believe my interpreter sometimes inserted on his own account the word “wise” before Mallam), who travelled about and wrote