Not only was it desirable to open up new areas from which palm fruits could be gathered, but, owing to the deficiency of pericarp oil shipped from the country in comparison with palm kernels, it was thought that, by the introduction of improved methods for extracting the pericarp oil, more of this commodity might be obtainable in the future. The prospect of working a large area both experimentally and commercially for oil extraction _in situ_, attracted Messrs. Lever Brothers, who installed ample mechanical apparatus at Yonnibannah in 1914. The Government had granted this firm a concession to work several hundred square miles on the understanding that the local traders and merchants were not thereby to be debarred from buying the hand-prepared oil from the natives as before. The scheme was intended to demonstrate the advantages of mechanical means of extraction over those of hand power; and it was thought that, by the introduction of these greater facilities for dealing with the oil palm products, labour would be liberated and would be employed to a greater extent in the less heavy and more remunerative direction of plantation and field work. Messrs. Lever Brothers’ factory was one designed to be equipped both from a mechanical and research standpoint, and a special shunting yard on the railway was leased to the firm by the Government to deal with the anticipated work. The project seemed so promising that local firms were contemplating following Messrs. Lever Brothers’ example in other localities. The whole scheme was, however, abandoned after a short trial; Messrs. Lever Brothers having probably discovered two facts in connection with the oil palm industry in Sierra Leone which had been lost sight of. The first is that the pericarp of the common type of palm fruit found in Sierra Leone, as pointed out in the first edition of this book, is very thin and therefore contains very little oil, and that the shell of the nuts in this thin-pericarped fruit is extremely thick. The common Sierra Leone kind is therefore of less economic value both in respect to pericarp oil and kernel contents than the common kind found in the Gold Coast, Nigeria and Kamerun. The second point is that the Mendis and Timanis occupying this part of the Protectorate are a lower type and generally poorer workers by comparison with the Fanti tribes of the Gold Coast or the Yorubas of Nigeria.