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In the early eighties of last century, a native of Accra, a town on the Gold Coast, returned from a term of employment on the European-managed cocoa plantations on the Spanish Island of Fernando Po. He brought back some cocoa pods with him and sowed the seeds on his own family land. The first consignment of native-grown cocoa was exported from the Gold Coast to Europe in 1885. It weighed 121lbs. and was valued at £6 1s. In 1895 tihe export had risen to 28,906lbs., valued at £471. In 1905 the export was 11½ million pounds, valued at £186,809. In 1913 the export amounted to 113¼ million pounds, valued at £2,484,218! The quality of the article produced in the last few years has well-nigh kept pace with the quantity. In 1908 only 5 per cent, of the Gold Coast cocoa was "good quality," 15 per cent, was "fair," and 80 per cent, "common." In 1912 the proportions were 35 per cent, "good," 50 per cent, "fair," and 15 per cent. " common." In 1913 the crop showed a further considerable improvement, the situation then being that "90 per cent, of Gold Coast is marketable anywhere, and only 10 per cent, thoroughly common and unfit for manufacture of a better class." In thirty years the Gold Coast and Ashanti farmers have placed this small British dependency of under 50,000 square miles, much of it unsuitable to cocoa cultivation, at the head of the cocoa-producing countries of the world. The Gold Coast now grows over 30 per cent, of the total world supply, its output being twice as great as that of Brazil, which is the next largest producer. In twenty-five years the small Gold Coast farmer—the despised West African native who sits in the sun all day, opening his mouth for a ripe banana to fall into it when moved to hunger—has outpaced Brazil, the West Indies, Ecuador, and San Thome as a tropical cultivator. He has shown what he can do under an honest administration, as a landowner, and working for himself. Every yard of land put under cocoa cultivation has been won from the hungry forest. The jungle has had to be cut down, cleared, planted and kept cleared—and with the most primitive of tools. Anyone who has had personal experience of the tropical African forest will appreciate what this means. Indeed, the native farmer in his enthusiasm is endangering the rainfall by a too wholesale destruction of the forests, and has to be checked in his own interest. In the early years