Coffee has been found to flourish most in the districts of Equateur and Aruwimi, and in the zone of Stanley Falls. Liberica, Arabian, and Guadaloupe are the varieties which have been selected as suited to the Congo soil and climate. The number of coffee plants has increased from 61,517 in 1894, to 1,996,200 in 1902. Cocoa plants numbered no fewer than 298,003 in 1902, an increase of 284,136 in ten years! In 1899 the State erected a factory for the preparation of coffee at Kinshassa, and adopted several new methods, improvements upon the practice in vogue in countries where coffee has been cultivated for generations. After being dried at the plantations, the coffee is placed in sacks and sent in State steamers to Stanley Pool, and thence to the Kinshassa factory. So good is the quality of Congo coffee that in 1894 it realised no less than 100 francs per 100 kilogrammes in the open market at Antwerp. Caoutchouc (rubber), for countless ages wholly a spontaneous product of the forests, every year becomes more and more an object of cultivation. By a decree dated January 5, 1899, it is provided that in all the forests of the domain caoutchouc trees shall be planted in the proportion of 150 feet to the ton of caoutchouc collected during the same period. By a subsequent decree, dated six months later, the number of caoutchouc trees to be planted for each ton of caoutchouc collected was raised from 150 feet to 500 feet. The enforcement of these decrees is attended to by a staff of foresters, consisting of eight controllers and twelve sub-controllers, working under a chief inspector. [Illustration: Shelling Coffee, Stanleyville.] [Sidenote: Collecting Rubber.] Until prohibited by State decree, the method of collecting caoutchouc practised by the natives was to make an incision in the plant (_liana_), and allow the fluid to run into a jar. Sometimes they allowed it to run into their hands, and afterwards smeared it over their bodies, and in that manner it was conveyed to market, where it was rubbed off with sand. It was an exceedingly wasteful method, or rather want of method, for the plant thus drawn from was necessarily killed. Only the prodigious quantity of plants existing on the Upper Congo and its tributaries has saved it from extinction. Now caoutchouc is harvested by extracting the fluid from the stem of the plant in a way that does it no injury, a scientific yet simple operation easily performed by women and children. The industry has assumed enormous proportions. The number of caoutchouc plants put into the ground by companies and by the State are valued at five million francs. The rubber annually produced in the world amounts at present to something over 30,000 tons, of which the Congo Free State exports 5000 tons. [Sidenote: The Rubber Plant.]