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NoRTHERN PROVINCES. 
The activities of the Agricultural Department in the Northern 
Provinces have been fruitful in several directions. In the first 
place the Kaduna roadsides have been planted with flowering 
trees, which’ even now are forming avenues of considerable 
interest and beauty. Secondly, it has stimulated vegetable and 
flower gardening, etc., and as a result the Kaduna Horticultural 
Society is a flourishing association of keen gardeners, while at the 
Hlorin and Maigana Plantations useful work is being carried out 
on the selection of Cotton, Maize, Ground Nuts, Guinea Corn, 
Tobacco and other Economic Products. A brief account of the 
tree planting at Kaduna and of the Botanic Station has been 
given in the Annual Reports of the Department for 1914 and 
1915 (see Kew Bull. 1917, p. 30). The site of the Station on the 
bank of the Kaduna river is a beautiful one, but it is at present 
a purely economic garden and is not laid out as an ornamental 
pleasaunce. Nor is it near enough to the town of Kaduna to 
make this very desirable. 
There is a very good collection of useful fruit trees, and 
vegetables of all kinds are being grown there with great success. 
In the dry season such cultivation is only possible with irrigation, 
and this is regularly practised. With the river alongside, there 
is plenty of water, but during the dry season the level of the 
river is so far below the garden level that the lifting of the 
water presents considerable difficulty. 
Owing to the dryness of the air in the dry season and the 
heat of the sun, not only vegetables but also pineapples have to 
be grown under a light shade, and it is also necessary to protect 
the bunches of Bananas with straw in order that they may ripen 
properly and not dryuponthe plant. It was of interest to learn 
that potatoes have been successfully cultivated and that, as 
I was able to see, the tubers will keep well if stored in a shaded 
pit with wood ashes and covered. with eye 
The fields at Maigana plantation were naturally all bare 
and fallow at the time of my visit, but the results of the cotton 
and other selections were examined in the sheds. It was of 
interest to see examples of the longer stapled Allen’s cotton which 
have been gradually selected at the Experiment Station, and it 
is hoped gradually to replace the inferior strains now grown by 
the native cultivators with the best strains selected at Maigana, 
and so increase very largely the value of the cotton output for 
the Northern Provinces. 
Vegetable growing, and also the cultivation of onions, sugar- 
cane and calabashes is practised by the natives in N. Nigeria 
to a considerable extent, and the onion crop is usually very good ; 
the native method of watering by means of a “ shadoof” and 
then running the water so lifted along channels is very practical 
and inexpensive and might well be developed to advantage. 
With a simple system of lifting the water as used by the 
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