The categories into which the lands within the borders of the Congo Free State naturally fall have already been briefly indicated in a previous chapter. The land system includes, first, a reservation of land exclusively for the use of the public. Second, lands sold upon an official scale of prices through a Land Department composed of five members. Third, concessions of land granted for a certain term of years, or as freehold, to companies organised to develop its productivity. Fourth, grants of use extended to those who, by arrangement with the State, thereby obtain the right to work a prescribed area for india-rubber. Certain zones of rubber-bearing territory are not subject to grants of use, the State reserving therein the exclusive right to work the forests, thereby following the system in force in the Soudan and in other neighbouring colonies. Finally, there are leases of three, six, or nine years, of land for commercial purposes, and leases for twenty to fifty years of lands for agricultural uses and the establishment of missions, schools, and churches. The latter possess areas aggregating about six thousand acres. The principal concessionary companies, operate over approximately one-fourth of the State. The lands conceded to such companies are transmitted under contracts very similar to those employed in the Soudan,[38] and provide for the improvement of the land by the erection of buildings, planting rubber vines, coffee, cocoa, breeding cattle, and collecting rubber in a manner which will not deplete the growing stock. The Congo State law imposes upon the rubber companies the duty of planting at least five hundred feet of rubber vines or trees for every ton of rubber harvested. The forests are safeguarded in respect of wood and other products, and special inspectors see to the rigorous enforcement of the law. There appears to be a different state of things in the rubber-bearing districts of British Lagos, where reckless destruction of the vines, waste, inattention, and lack of intelligent organisation have reduced the rubber yield in 1900 to one-tenth its harvest in 1896, with the decline still continuing. The same measure of rapid decline is going on in the Gold Coast and Sierra Leone. “The decrease in the export of rubber from £347,721 in 1896 to £160,315 in 1899 is clearly due to the reckless and unskilful manner in which rubber was collected.”[39]