conditions and did not. A Government experimental farm was started at Maiganna rather late last year, the sowings being made in July, if I remember rightly, seventeen miles from Zaria city. This is an excellent initiative which it is to be hoped will be maintained. It is really Government work. The British Cotton-growing Association should be spared all expense of this kind. Two varieties indigenous to the southern provinces (Bassa and Ilorin) and “Nyassaland upland” were planted. I was told last November by the official in charge that the indigenous varieties were doing fairly well, but that the “Nyassaland” was suffering from red-leaf. The British Cotton-growing Association was then about to put up a large and costly ginnery at Zaria. The operation is proceeding, and a substantial quantity of cotton has already been bought. I will refer to that later on. Meantime I cannot help thinking that it might have been better to have waited a little and set up the ginnery at Kano. However, this is merely a personal opinion. The chief varieties of indigenous cotton grown in the Kano province are three in number. The first is known under the four following names—_gundi_, _bagwandara_, _lutua_, or _mailaushi_; the second as _chukwi_ or _labai_. These two are the best kinds, their quality being about the same. The third is called _yerkarifi_ or _yergeri_. It is of an inferior quality with a shorter staple, usually but not always grown where the soil is not naturally rich enough to support the other kinds. It is the _yerkarifi_ variety, I gathered, which is more often used as a perennial. It fetches a lower price on the local markets and takes a month longer to mature. Cotton plants are fairly free from insect pests, but the following are identified: the cotton boll worm (_tsutsa_), what is described, doubtfully, as an ant which attacks the root (_zago_), and two species of blight (_makau_ and _madi_). The native remedy, apart from constant hoeing, is to light a fire to windward, upon which the dried leaves of a certain plant, and also dried fish, are thrown. The question of indigenous _versus_ exotic varieties here crops up again. One hears talk of flooding the country with exotic seed and doing away altogether with the indigenous varieties. I refer to Zaria, where some five hundred bags of exotic seed—or at least non-local seed—were distributed this spring after a palaver with the Emir and his principal headmen. No doubt it may be all right. From the non-expert point of view it seems dangerous. As already stated, African insect life fastens with relentless savagery upon exotic plant life, just as it revels in nice fresh blood out from Europe. One season’s failure with an exotic or non-local variety, sown by instructions of the Emir’s headmen in lieu of the indigenous kind, might create a prejudice in the native’s mind that it would take years to remove. Concentration upon improving the fertility of