PART V. 3 
where simsim is of better quality, into other districts where it is not 
of so good quality, distribution not being haphazard but being 
controlled, so that we know the centres from which distribution is 
being made and to what other centres we are reaching out. 1 may 
mention that the output of simsim in the Territory for last year was 
about equal in value to that of ivory, a product of more attractive 
interest, but thus only equal in importance to the seventh agricultural 
product. 
As regards rice, we have some very excellent kinds of indigenous 
rice; and so far we have not had the advantage of plant breeders to 
enable us to do any improving; but we are trying to increase our 
output, and we shall bring about greater production of those kinds 
by a carefully controlled distribution, with the aid of native 
administrations, which will gradually extend and enlarge the areas of 
the better kinds of rice, and oust, we hope, the less valuable kinds. 
Plantation rubber is quite a new thing to us. In German times 
it was one of the principal products—next to sisal it was the most 
important product of the country; it was largely developed at that time 
by means of British capital. As a legacy of the Germans we have 
very large areas of that ‘‘ beautiful ’’ plant, Ceara rubber. Last 
year, owing to the state of the market—as we all know, every kind 
of rubber got higher prices for a short time—Ceara rubber became of 
greater value, and on some of the estates that were the least 
dilapidated, so to speak, tapping was done and produced quite a 
reasonable quantity of rubber, most of which went to Hamburg. This 
new production we do not expect to be able to maintain: it was a 
production that ousted millet—or I might say more accurately, the 
millets—from our first ten important exports. Our millets are an 
important production; the amount of export depends on three things: 
the weather, which gives the bulk production; the amount of demand 
there is for them in Northern Africa and India, where the millets 
largely go; and, also, to the way in which economic conditions happen 
to be affecting the Indian trader. 
Returning to plantation rubber, which, as 1 said, ousted the 
millets from their former importance, it is quite possible that there 
will continue to be some demand for that product, now that it has been 
discovered that the very existence of its resinous content, which 
brought it into disfavour as compared with other rubbers in former 
years, has proved itself a property of advantage; and it is being used, 
mostly in Germany, for electrical insulation, especially under wate. 
. Beeswax is an export that has decreased very largely since ihc 
time of the Germans, owing to the wasteful way in which they 
encouraged its collection, at the expense of the producers of it, the 
bees. We hope, however, in time to remedy that; it will take time, but 
our Entomologist, Mr. Ritchie, has devised means of teaching the 
patives both the proper way in which to deal with the wax and the 
best kind of hive in which ta collect it. Although low in the scale the 
value of the export of beeswax is equal to that of gold: that more 
picturesque product of the Territory. 
Another new export is cotton seed. Cotton seed last year through 
market conditions became our eleventh export in value, equalling mita, 
second to gold, the chief mineral product. 
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