240 
- Nores on the Som and CULTIVATION of YORUBA-LAND, with special 
Remarks on the Work of EARTH-WORMS in West AFRICA. 
After passing the fringe of forest which skirts the lagoons to the 
eastward of Lagos for some 50 miles inland, a vast tract of open country 
of cultivation as to bear no spontaneous vegetation but grass; some o 
followed, the vegetation is seen to be fast returning to its original con- 
dition ; small trees begin to assert themselves among the undergrowth ; 
young palms—such as the Bamboo palm (Ruphia vinifera), the Oil- 
orass 
and, along with them, the cotton trees, of which three sorts are seen, 
the Ogea-gum tree, and young plants of the gigantic Baobab (Adansonia 
digitata) push their heads up towards the light. Wherever the richer 
lands are deserted for long periods by the farmer a tendency is shown 
to revert to the forest of shallow-rooting trees which shuts off these 
ception of those which follow the gravel beds which run parallel 
tothe coast. 'The first of these gravel *ridges," as they would be 
s into and is eneircled by the 
true forest of the Ijebu country. In the fertile lands of the interior and 
upon ironstone 
apparently unfavourable for the growth of lofty forest trees. Even the 
woodland belt which skirts the coast, though poetically described by 
travellers as ** the impenetrable forest of West Africa,” cannot for a 
rica. ‘The onl 
occasional “ Iroko” tree. In other places the crests of the Oil palm 
uineensis), notoriously a palm of short stature, are level with 
in the Ijebu forest at not more than from 80 feet to 100 feet, while in 
rich soil of the Oslum River valley where it enters the ljesha 
he average may be from 100 feet to 120 feet. The cotton trees, 
of course, tower high above the rest, but even these are not equal in 
