i 114 Kagelu Farm. The management of the farm at Kagelui in the Lado was taken over in March 1915, principallj as a ruhber plantation and demonstration area. The following is a rsumd of the work :— Rubber.—The total area planted is 340 acres, and there are now 50,000 well established trees. In 1919 the 8,000 trees planted in 1915 were tapped for the first time and yielded 2 tons of dry rubber.

Coffee.—By the end of 1919 there were 4,200 bushes planted, chiefly of Liberian and Arabian varieties. Results show that coffee of good quality can be cultivated in the Lado on a commercial scale.

Cassava or ta'pioca.—This has been adopted as the chief food crop for the labour on the farm. The total area under this crop is 150 acres.

The following timber trees have been planted :— Lado mahogany. Eucalyptus, several species. Indian teak, seed from Burmah. Indian red cedar, seed from India.

A great variety of fruit trees have been planted and have done well. All kinds of English vegetables have been cultivated with success.

Experiments have been made with tobacco, cinchona, cocoa, camphor, ginger, &c. The tobacco experiments have been a decided success. Cinchona is also likely to do well.

11. Veterinary.

On the outbreak of the war in 1914 the needs of the Army Veterinary Corps for trained officers were so urgent that ten officers (including the director) of a total strength of nineteen in the Soudan were at once reabsorbed into the British army.

The director returned to the Soudan before the end of the year, but it was not until the second half of 1918 that it was found possible to increase the British Veterinary Staff in this country.

During that interval the director. Lieutenant-Colonel F. U. Carr, died in Egypt after an illness of some months, an event which was both on personal and official grounds a very serious loss to the country. • This curtailment by half of the staff necessitated a modification of the activities of the Department.

This took the form of the withdrawal of officers from the outlying provinces, and the almost complete abolition of the Veterinary Survey Section. Efforts were, in fact, confined to the control of the animal export trade, and to the protection, as far as possible, of the nearer sources and arteries of this trade. Such was the position of affairs in the second half of 1914 and in 1915.

During the Darfur campaign in 1916 heavy demands for Soudan camels were made In’- the Egyptian Expeditionary Force. This meant the utilisation of veterinary Officers not only for the veterina] services of the campaign, but also as purchasing officers to supply the requirements in camels of the Darfur expedition and of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force. These urgent services naturally resulted in a certain loss of control over animal diseases.

At the end of 1917 the services of six Egyptian veterinary officers were secured, and by the aid of these it was possible to establish a certain degree of control of animal diseases along the main tiade routes, but the situation was not well in hand until near the end of 1918 when six British veterinary officers joined the Department.

As the war progressed the world shortage of meat became more acute, with the result that the demands of the civil population of Egypt and of the ilyptian Expeditionary Force for Soudan meat became more and more insistent. Every endeavour was made to collect and export cattle and sheep for Egypt to the utmost carrying capacity of the Egyptian State railways, and these efforts were most successful, the exports in 1918 exceeding the most optimistic forecasts.

In 1919 cattle plague (rinderpest) was very prevalent in the southern provinces. Outbreaks were reported in the Bahr-el-Ghazal, Mongalla, Sennar, Upper Nile, and the disease was prevalent to a milder extent in Berber, Blue Nile, and Kassala. It has become evident that successful dealing with this disease depends House of Commons Parliamentary Papers Online. Copyright (c) 2006 ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights reserved.