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(Continued from page 99.) Nigeria is now an important and flourishing colony, four times as large as Great Britain, with a population of over eighteen millions. Yet our official connexion with it began only eighty years ago, when a Vice-Consul was sent to Lagos. Mr. A. C. Burns, who is Deputy Chief Secretary to the Colonial Government, has written a useful and interesting History of Nigeria (Allen and Unwin, 15s.), in which he describes its present state as well as its past. He emphasizes the success of the policy of ruling through the native chiefs, and he takes a favourable view of the capacity of the negro to benefit by Western civilization, though his progress must be slow and gradual. He reminds us . that West Africa can never be a white man's country, though for temporary residence it is no longer unhealthy.
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