Anredo Sudan-Egyptian] AGRICULTURE (COTTON , ETC. ) 99 used for food both for men and for animals. Lucerne and bersine thrive well . Cow peas, lupins, chick peas, &c. , are cultivated mostly on the river banks in the northern Sudan during the low -water season .

Cotton and other Fibres .-Although cotton occupies only about 2 per cent. of the total area under cultiva tion, it is the most important product of the country from an economic point of view. Centuries ago a trade in raw cotton wascarried on between the ancient king dom of Sennar and Abyssinia. In more recent times, during the rule of the Khalifa, taxes in the Blue Nile district were paid largely in the shape of goods manu factured from locally grown cotton .

It has been said ' of the Sudan as a whole , not merely of the Anglo -Egyptian Sudan : “ Cotton has been grown by the natives as long as we have known anything about the Sudan, both in Nigeria and on the Nile. There is absolutely no reason why the Central and the Eastern Sudan should not be among the greatest cotton countries of the world .”

Native -grown cotton , of which some 8,000 bales were exported from the Sudan in 1912 , could not , however, compete with the scientifically cultivated product of Egypt unless the producers were supervised and instructed in the most modern methods. With this object in view , the Government hasestablished experi mental farms, and has placed under supervision the district of Tokar, where cotton has long been grown. In 1912 the Sudan Cotton Ordinance was passed. This decree regulates the importation and supply of cotton seed, through the Director of Agriculture, provides for special licences for ginning factories, and insists upon the clean picking of the cotton andthe grading of the seed according to quality. It also empowers the governors of provinces to establish such regulations as may be requisite to meet special local conditions, and , 1 Kumm , From Hausaland to Egypt, 1910 .