494 WEST AFRICAN FORESTS AND FORESTRY 



a special name for this type of forest ; amongst the Efiks it is called 

 Ekai, the Yorubas term it Igbo, and the Benin people Egbo. Con- 

 sidering the size of these last remnants of the real high forest, agri- 

 culture cannot justly claim the right to clear and farm even this area 

 when so much (estimated at 28,000 square miles), apart from the area 

 already mentioned, has been cleared during the last fourteen years. 

 In the above estimate, areas even of 500 square miles for roadways 

 and railways, 1,000 square miles for town, village and factory sites, 

 and 2,500 square miles for inland waterways were allowed for when 

 computing the whole area of forest land. 



At the present time in Nigeria, with the exception of certain 

 specified trees, and less so in the Gold Coast, Sierra Leone and the 

 Gambia, there is nothing to hinder a native from cutting down any 

 forest he pleases for making a temporary farm. In fact, the difference 

 between farming as practised in civilized countries and in these tropical 

 West African Colonies is that the former partakes of a permanent 

 cultivation of the same land every year, whereas the latter is shifting 

 cultivation of a different piece of land almost every year. At the 

 most, the Yoruba returns to the land in five or seven years, and 

 the native of Benin after ten or twelve years. 



Another point which bears on this question is really the compara- 

 tively small amount of land which a native actually farms every year. 

 For instance, an energetic Yoruba farmer will make 2,000 yam heaps 

 a year, which, allowing for the distance of 6 feet between each heap, 

 amounts to r6 acres per year. This also includes the help which he 

 may receive from his family. 



Out of a total population of 8,000,000, at the most 2,000,000 are 

 actually men who make farms. It follows, then, that some 2,560,000 

 acres, or 4,000 square miles, are cleared and planted each year. Now, 

 allowing sufficient land for the native to be able to return to the 

 original piece cleared after seven years, the total amount of land 

 necessary for the existing farming population would be 28,000 square 

 miles, or rather more than a third of the total area of the country. 

 Even after allowing 19,000 or 26,000 square miles of forest in the 

 country, there would still remain nearly a third, or 25,000 square miles, 

 for the future development of agriculture and the natural increase of 

 the population. It should be especially noted that it is under a system 

 of shifting cultivation that this 28,000 square miles is required. No 

 doubt under permanent cultivation less would be necessary. Quite 

 apart, however, from this consideration, owing to the greater heat, 

 moisture and humidity in the Tropics generally, and in the Southern 

 Provinces of Nigeria particularly, agricultural crops grow much more 

 rapidly and are much more prolific than in the more temperate zones, 

 even without manures. Yet in another way there is not such an 

 enormous demand on the amount of land required per unit of popu- 



