The Birmingham age-herald., 1908-04-19

aidinor in the movement by distributing seeds It has also put in hand gins III different parts of the country and ballns presses for public use
 While at this factory l went through the mud houses which have been erected for the men and more especially for the Hindoo clerks connected with the busi- ness. They are rude one-stoTy affairs ana do not compare in comfort with tne homes of our factory people of the south.
 Just outside the ginning establishment score of natives were making bricks. The clay looked to me as though 1t came from the hills of the white ants It lay in a pile on the ground and men and women dressed in bark cloth, squatted about it pounding the clods into aust with clubs. In pool nearby another gang of natives was mixing the dust and water together making the mud out of which the bricks are nodded. Tie men were naked almost to the waist, and they tramped up and down in the mud to knead it for the bricks.
 Africa As Cotton Continent.
 The experiments going on as to cotton here are representative of others now be- ing tried in the various parts of Africa. l have already written of the cotton pos abilities of the Sudan. They are enor- mours, and the cotton now being raised about Khartum is equal in quality to the best of that produced on the delta of the Nile. In British East Africa the author ities are attempting to raise cotton, and several successful plantations have been set out in South Africa. l understand that the Germans are doing considerable in the same line, not only between here and Lake Tanganyika, but also along the coast in the vicinity of Zanzibar, and that they are already producing in the neighborhood of 1000 bales of lint per year They have raised as much as 300 bales in a year on their little plantations in Togoland on the Gulf of Guinea, and they ahve sown cotton in the kamerun and in Southwest Africa The Italians are attempting the same in Eritrea, the little strip of territory which they own along the Red sea. So far their success has been small.
 As to the French, they have done prac- tically nothing in cotton in Africa as yet. The Belgians are making experiments throughout the Kongo valley, where they have plantations managed by Americans from Texas. They are using American seed, and the cotton grown is of excellent quality.
 The British have an organization known as the British Cotton Growing assocsa- ton, which is backing many of the ex- periments in the English colonies. That organization has a capital of $1,000,000, and it's plantations here and there are HOW producing something like a half mill lion dollars worth of cotton year. Some of it's best work is being done in West Africa, and especially in Nigeria. There are also ginning establishments at Lagos, which take care of the cotton grown near the coast. 1 understand that there are 5000 or 4o,0o0 acres there in a fairly good state of cultivation.
 Plants Which Produce Silk.
 It seems like fairy story when I say that there are plants out here in Africa which produce fbers which may possibly be made into silk as fine as any spun by the silk worm. l am told that this is the case My informant is MT. R. T. Paske- Smith, the assistant collector at kam- pala, who was formerly stationed away off in the interior of Uganda. He says that he found there a plant which he thinks might be used for silk manufac- ture. Said he:
 'I saw many of these plants growing wild. They reach a height of fifive or six feet, and bear fruit shaped like the cotton boil but much larger 1 should say that the average fruit is as big around a mans first. These bolls have a silky fiber three or four inches long. It looks somewhat like cotton but it is far more soft, feecy and glossy. The fiber Is wrapped around the seeds. During my stay there l gathered lot of the wild gseeds and picked off the lint I then sowed them in about half an acre of we'll prepared ground. They grew rapidly without further. cultivation, and when