apore, if equally successful in the culture of the same, would
yield yearly 137,000 lbs. of nutmegs, 45,000 lbs. of mace, and 60,000
lbs. of cloves. In short, the planters needed only encouragement to
produce in the course of a few years a full supply of those valuable
spices for the whole consumption of Great Britain.

Dr. Ruschenberger, who visited Zanzibar in 1835, thus speaks of the
clove plantations there:--"As far as the eye could reach over a
beautifully undulated land, nothing was to be seen but clove trees of
different ages, varying in height from five to twenty feet. The form
of the tree is conical, the branches grow at nearly right angles with
the trunk, and they begin to shoot a few inches above the ground. The
plantation contains nearly four thousand trees, and each tree yields
on an average six pounds of cloves a year; they are carefully picked
by hand, and then dried in the shade; we saw numbers of slaves
standing on ladders gathering the spice, while others were at work
clearing the ground of dead leaves. The whole is in the finest order,
presenting a picture of industry and of admirable neatness and beauty.
They were introduced into Zanzibar in 1818, from Mauritius, and are
found to thrive so well that almost everybody in the island is now
clearing away the cocoa nut to make way for them. The clove bears in
five or six years from the seed; of course time enough has not yet
elapsed for the value and quantity of Zanzibar cloves to be generally
known; they are worth, however, in the Bombay market, about 30s. the
Surat maund of 391/4 lbs.; the price for Molucca cloves in the Eastern
market is from 28 to 30 dollars per picul of 133 lbs.; for those of
Mauritius, 20 to 24 dollars per picul."

The average annual consumption of cloves in the United Kingdom, in the
four years ending 1841, was 49,000 lbs. The largest quantity of cloves
imported during the past twenty-five years was 1,041,171 lbs., in
1847. The quantities imported and entered for home consumption in the
last five years have been as follows:--

Imports. Home consumption.
lbs. lbs.
1848 117,433 126,691
1849 274,713 133,713
1850 749,646 159,934
1851 253,439 138,132
1852 313,949 175,287

In 1848 we received 60,000 lbs. of cloves from British India.

THE NUTMEG.

_Myris