be done under existing conditions. Now, the annual total exports during the five years ending—
| 1875, | amounted in value to, | £396,709 |
| 1880, | amounted„in„value to,„ | £368,855 |
| 1885, | amounted„in„value to,„ | £386,848 |
| 1890, | amounted„in„value to,„ | £333,390 |
| 1895, | amounted„in„value to,„ | £435,175 |
These figures show for the twenty-five years an increase of less than 10 per cent., or about 12 per cent. per annum; and this is not so very thrilling when one comes to think that that 10 per cent., and probably more, is showing the increase in the trade not of Sierra Leone, but of French Guinea, and remembers that in 1874 the exports were £481,894, an amount they have not since touched.
Then again even in error you are never quite sure if your Colonial Annual is keeping line; sometimes you will get one by a careful conscientious secretary who takes no end of trouble, and tells you lots of things which you would like to hear about next year, only next year you don't. For example, in Sierra Leone affairs the report for 1887 gave you the imports for consumption in the colony, while that of 1896 represented the total imports, including those afterwards shipped to French Guinea and elsewhere; and again, in estimating the value of the imports Gambia adds the cost of freight and insurance to the invoice value of imports, and the cost of package to the declared value of exports. So far, only Gambia does this, but at any moment an equally laudable spirit might develop in one of the other colonies, and cause further distraction to the student of their figures.
Besides these clerking errors of omission, there is a
