Kola nuts are used in tropical Africa in the same manner as betel nuts are in Asia. Their taste is somewhat bitter, and the mastication of fresh nuts seems to increase the flow of saliva. Chewing kola nuts is resorted to by the natives in order to allay thirst, or even hunger, and for this reason they are in great demand among the inhabitants of the Sudan, to which country they are largely exported, being carried by men and donkeys in caravans, which travel from the forest limits of Ashanti through the Northern Territories. The donkeys, which are chiefly used to transport the nuts, do not generally enter the forests, but the kola nuts are packed in elongated head-loads, in bamboo or palm-stalk frames, in which form they are carried to the place where the donkeys have been left. The caravans bring shea-butter, guinea corn, cattle, and skins, which they exchange for kola. The weight of nuts exported from the Gold Coast is about 50 per cent. above that of Sierra Leone, but, in value, the latter are worth from three to five times as much per ton. The fresh nuts are shipped to Lagos and are transported far into the interior by Haussa traders. =COTTON.=—No record is available to show when the tribes of the forest country commenced to cultivate and use cotton for local requirements. It has been stated that the people of the kingdoms of the Western Sudan were acquainted with the uses of the fibre, and have cultivated the plant, from a remote period, and it is probable that contact with these people, during their expeditions against the tribes to their south, led to the adoption by the latter of cotton-growing upon the small scale in which it still remains at present. Cruickshank, writing of the Fantis in 1853, says: “They spin the thread from the cotton which grows in the country, but they more commonly make use of the thread out of English cloths, which they pick to pieces.” In speaking of the Appolonians, a tribe inhabiting the coast region near Axim, Cruickshank remarks that they “make fine grass cloths, which are strong and durable.” In Ashanti, until recently, a cloth was commonly made from the inner bark of a tree, generally supposed to be _Antiaris toxicaria_ var. _africana_, which was produced by the removal of the woody portions by beating, leaving a pliable material composed of the interlacing fibres. These instances are cited to show that the value of cotton for cultivation has not been recognised by some of the large and dominant tribes in comparatively recent times. Since cotton clothing has begun to be appreciated, the necessity of growing the plant and weaving has been somewhat checked by the large imports of finished material from Europe.