Rare sorts are nowhere to be met with, for the Forastero bean has conquered the whole of Africa. The sorts produced are accordingly rather adapted for general consumption. St. Thomas and the Gold Coast provide a third of the world’s present-day cacao supply, and in the English colony especially, the geological and climatic conditions are of such a kind, that the ~Gold Coast~ might very well become to the raw cacao market of the future what the Brazilian province, San Paulo, is now to the coffee trade. In the middle of the “Eighties”, the Swiss Missionary Society planted in the vicinity of their station, and so started the cultivation of the cacao tree now flourishing throughout the land. The first fruits came to Europe in 1891, and in 1894 already totalled 20 tons. In 1901 it was 1,000 tons, 1906 approaching 10,000 tons, and the year 1911 provided the record with about 40,000 tons. It is true that complaints were long and rightly lodged concerning the inferior quality, due to carelessness on the part of the natives in conducting the processes of preparation. But since the year 1909, there have appeared on the market side by side with the inferior and so-called current qualities, which still retains more or less of the defects of the earlier produce, another and properly fermented cacao, in no mean quantities; it is very popular in all cacao-consuming lands, and fetches from 2 to 3 shillings per cwt. more than the current qualities. All this has been achieved through intelligent and sympathetic guidance and control of the small native planter on the government’s part, without resource to any large organised plantation system. ~Accra~ cacao, then, as the sorts of the African Gold Coast are collectively named, also promises to be the cacao of the future, if it can maintain its quantitative and qualitative excellence. There is indeed no want of soil and adequate labour strength in that province. Apart from Accra, Addah, Axim, Cape Coast Castle, Prampram, Winebah, Saltpond, Secondi must be mentioned above all. The chief harvest is from October to February. ~Togo~, the small German colony adjoining the British Gold Coast, has till now had only a yearly yield of 250 tons in a variety resembling Accra. The excellent beans prepared on the plantations fetch several shillings a cwt. more than Accra, whilst the deliveries of the natives rank below the current specimens of this sort. Its port is Lome. ~Lagos~, the British Colony bordering on Dahomey and east of the Gold Coast, is watered by the Niger and possesses cacao exporting ports in Lagos, Bonni and Old Calabar, and exports about 4,000 tons of a sort resembling Accra, but nevertheless not so well prepared and so of inferior value. The cacao plantations of the Lagos colony,—more properly known as Southern Nigeria—lie on either side of the great Niger delta, in low lying land where the climatic and geological conditions are quite different from those in the neighbouring German possession of