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Botanic GARDENS AND PLANTATIONS. 
A small and practically useless sugar plant has been set up 
in the station, but it seems hardly the function of the Agricultural 
Department to demonstrate that sugar can be made from Sugar 
Cane, but rather that it is possible to grow the raw material. 
ere is a tendency with Botanic Gardens in the Tropics, 
noticeable to some extent in Nigeria, to regard them as places 
where fruit and vegetables should be grown for the benefit of 
the white community. That they should serve as instructional 
centres for disseminating knowledge about the possibilities of 
growing such useful products is legitimate, but the cultivation 
of such products on a commercial scale, as also in the case of 
sugar, should be entrusted to private enterprise. Such private 
enterprise, however, should be stimulated and encouraged as 
far as possible by the Agricultural authorities. In the Federated 
Malay States market gardening enterprise has been successfully 
undertaken by the Chinese, and it would seem possible, from 
what one saw in N. Nigeria, gradually to encourage the W. African 
native to take up the growing of vegetables for market, as a 
commercial venture. 
The Botanic Stations should also be prepared to propagate 
and distribute the most suitable varieties of economic plants for 
cultivation, and this function was being well performed by the 
Gardens and Plantations in Nigeria. 
The other Stations and Plantations visited were those at 
Agege, near Lagos; Ibadan, the headquarters of the Agricultural 
Department, Southern Provinces; Kaduna, the headquarters 
for the Northern Provinces and the experimental station at 
Maigana near Zaria. 
The time at my disposal unfortunately did not allow of a 
visit being paid to Onitsha or to orin, where useful work has 
been done in the selection of Tobacco and Cotton suitable for 
cultivation in that district. . . 
