254 SCIENCE IN AFRICA 



department of agriculture in Uganda, and trials with the effects 

 of cultivation on wild trees have been carried out since 1922 by the 

 agricultural department of the Gold Coast on the Yendi shea 

 reserve; a marked increase in yield is reported. Here also yield 

 data of individual trees have been kept and samples of nuts from 

 different harvests have been investigated by the Imperial Institute 

 with interesting results. The establishment of these plantations in 

 French West Africa was recommended by E. Annet (1930), but 

 the suggestion does not appear to have been taken up. 



The soya bean {Glycine max), a plant which has a high nutritive 

 value in addition to a variety of economic uses, has been subjected 

 to experiment in a number of territories. Trials in Nyasaland have 

 proved fairly successful, but those carried out in Tanganyika, the 

 Gambia and Sierra Leone have led to the conclusion that the 

 crop is unsuited to those territories (Tanganyika, Agriculture, 

 1935, D.R., p. 124). In Southern Rhodesia there is a tendency in 

 the better varieties for the pods to shatter the seed before the crop 

 is reaped, and efforts are being made to remedy this defect by 

 selection (Southern Rhodesia 1934, D.R.). The standard work on 

 the soya bean is by Piper and Morse (1923). 



FIBRES 



Cotton. There exist in Africa more than one species of wild 

 cotton and one of these is probably the ancestor of a cotton which 

 can still be found under cultivation in the extreme north-west of 

 Nigeria. Apparently any hold which this had among the people 

 as a cultivated crop was largely lost when the cottons of the New 

 World were introduced. This must have been at a very early date 

 after the discovery of America. Gossypium punctatum, considered 

 by Roberty (1938) to be merely a form of G. hirsutiim, is still 

 a common crop grown for local use in the dryer parts of West 

 Africa from the Gambia to Nigeria and is being utilized in cotton 

 breeding work at the present time. 



Besides this there are in Africa several races of the Vitifolium 

 group of G. barbadense L. These are chiefly found in West Africa, 

 but they also occur in Northern Rhodesia, Nyasaland, and Portu- 

 guese East Africa where they sometimes assume almost the charac- 

 ter of trees, being grown as perennials in the house compounds of 



