It is not a feature of this little publication that minor regions shall be all enumerated, and thus I may be forgiven if I refer but to one of the several new districts which have recently attracted the attention of both oil operators and speculators. I refer to the Maikop fields, which prominently came before the British investing public in 1910, and which were directly responsible for the oil boom of that year. A few months before, a very prolific spouter of oil had been struck in Maikop, which was then quite an agricultural centre, and enormous excitement followed. Land was quickly taken over at ever-increasing prices, and the boom, for which English capital was largely responsible, lasted for several months. There have been many opinions put forward by supposed experts in oil geology for and against the Maikop oil region, but the kindest thing of all that can be said for the district is that, while there was really no justification for the remarkable Maikop oil boom of 1910, there was certainly no reason why public opinion should so rapidly change in regard to its potentialities. I have every reason to believe that some day Maikop will justify the optimistic opinions held for it during the boom, but in the eyes of the English investor the region bears the stamp of fraud, for the simple reason that so many have invested their savings in it, and have been doomed to acute disappointment. Some millions of English money went into Maikop oil enterprises during that ill-fated oil boom, but a very small percentage of this went to really prove the contents of the lower strata. The fact that the ground was simply “scratched” and condemned because it did not respond with oil fountains, cannot in the slightest affect the ultimate career of the Maikop oil region, the presence of oil in which has been known even from ancient times. Looking back upon that Maikop oil boom, one cannot but express surprise at our gullibility generally: we stake our faith and our capital upon what at the best is a sheer gamble, and we seem content if we find that anything approaching 20 per cent. of the money subscribed actually goes into the serious development of the scheme which we fancied. There are a few who grow suddenly rich upon the spoils of such oil booms--I know some of these personally, and to me it has always been a source of keen regret that the State does not exercise something of a rigid control over these publicly invested funds. I cannot here refrain, while on the subject of the Maikop oil boom, just making a remark as to the overrated value which the public generally attach to the reports of many gentlemen looked upon as oil experts. Some remarkable stories are associated with the locking up (and loss) of English moneys in the Maikop boom, but the strangest I know is of a Russian who came to England when the boom was at its height, for the purpose of selling a number of Maikop oil claims.