xxii. Timehri. 



where. Unfortunately large proportions of them are washed into and 

 carried away by river-waters and hence accumulate finally in the ocean 

 but fair proportions of them are deposited and retained elsewhere 

 giving rise to fluviatile and valley alluvia which are usually fertile and 

 in places very fertile. This is the condition characteristic of the parts 

 of the interior of the Colony which I have visited — vast tracts of lands of 

 low fertiliy situated between the courses of the rivers, and other wide 

 areas of land of far higher fertility which occur along the banks of the 

 rivers and especially in the bottoms of the numerous valleys in these 

 districts. 



I have here specimens showing the way in which under tropical con- 

 ditions massive rocks change directly into earths — lateritic or kaolinic. 

 This one is a specimen of a diabase from Hope near Kumaru on the 

 Demerara River in which is seen the massive rock changing in the space 

 of less than one fourth of an inch into an ochreous lateritic earth ; this is a 

 hornblende-schist from Yarikita, North West District, in which a similar 

 change is seen ; whilst the third specimen is an epidiorite from Issorora, 

 North West District, which is changing quite abruptly into a bauxitic 

 earth or laterite. This specimen, which I collected at the Penal Settle- 

 ment, was a massive granite which now as you see crumbles down to sand 

 when rubbed between the fingers ; whilst this one is a skeleton in quartz 

 of a fine-grained granite-gneiss in which every trace of felspar, of mica, 

 and even of kaolinic residues has disappeared leaving a spongy-looking 

 mass which nature will gradually break up into a white, sharply angular, 

 quartz-sand. 



These specimens show the final products which rocks, which in tem- 

 perate climates gradually change to fertile soils, resolve into from weather- 

 ing or lateritisation in the tropics — quartz-sand, bauxite, iron-ores, 

 (limonite or goethite) and kaolin. 



The writer of the letter of March 1st, 1911, stated that " my 

 facts are nearly all derived from the evidence you gave before the 

 Royal Commission." That evidence as far as it related to the soils of the 

 interior was as follows : — 



" There are places where cacao is growing fairly well on the 

 " Demerara River, but the soils that would be more suitable for 

 " cacao are situated a long way back. The nearest soils I have noticed 

 " which would be really first-rate cacao soils are 100 miles up the 

 " river. They are situated where there are dykes of dolerite. There 

 " are soils fairly suited to the growth of cacao where the heavy clay 

 " of the front lands of the Colony begin to merge into the sand-reef 

 " formation.'' 



" There is no doubt you could find soils suitable for almost any 

 " tropical product here ; it is only a case of having investigations of 

 " the soils of the Colony made. Wc know about many of the soils 

 " on the front lands, but beyond that we know very little of what 

 " we have got. We know there is a great belt of sandhills, but it is 

 " no use looking for good soils there from the very nature of the 

 " formation, but on the sides of some of the lower hills we find soils 



