COTTON 109 



3. Black, adhering seeds, "kidney" kind, lint creamy. 

 Common Central Province. 



4. White or brownish woolly seeded, lint creamy. 

 Meko and Agbede kinds. 



5. Green woolly seeded, lint creamy. Rather uncom- 

 mon except at Agege. 



The characters of the above classes do not appear to 

 be sufficiently constant to render it easy to give each 

 class a specific position, although some of them are 

 doubtless separable. All native forms of plant are 

 constantly of greater stature than American, and in this 

 particular resemble Egyptian kinds. 



The red-linted form known as " Eponkon " is identical 

 with the " Dhoole " of Sierra Leone, and, although 

 prolific, yields a cotton which is of little value for export. 

 The other four kinds are those from which the Southern 

 Nigerian output of exported cotton is almost wholly 

 obtained, and the price realised varies from \d. under 

 to Id. or more over Middling American. The finest 

 cottons are those grown at Agege and Meko ; the former 

 being supposed to be a hybrid with an American variety, 

 and the latter a constant local variety. Some of the 

 shipments, from Illushi, of cotton grown near Agbede 

 appear to have been of equally desirable quality. 



A large number of specimens of cotton have been 

 examined at the Imperial Institute, and the length of 

 fibre is generally found to be over one inch in average, 

 but the colour is yellowish, and there is less lustre than 

 is found in the American kinds. Although the price 

 obtained is often somewhat higher than that of the 

 standard Middling American grade, Manchester spinners 

 do not regard West African cotton as quite suitable 

 for their ordinary requirements, and it appears that 

 the higher prices have only been paid for small 

 quantities which were capable of being used for special 

 purposes. 



For the reason mentioned, efforts have been made to 

 replace the indigenous cottons by American kinds, or 

 to hybridise the two, but the results have not yet been 

 successful, the tendency being to produce an irregular 

 mixed lint, which is commercially inferior. American 

 and Egyptian cottons seem to be less capable of with- 

 standing the attacks of the local insect pests, and a 



