ufacturers at home.

In consequence of the recent liberal policy of Great Britain, the
competition of foreign countries, the want of cheap and abundant
labor, and other causes, those chief staples, Sugar and Coffee, which
for a series of years formed the principal and almost exclusive
articles of production in our colonies, and which had met with a ready
and remunerative sale in the British markets, have either fallen off
to an alarming extent, or become so reduced in price as scarcely to
repay the cost of cultivation. The partial abandonment of the
cultivation of these staples in our colonies has had the effect of
crippling the agricultural and commercial enterprise of several of our
most valuable foreign possessions, and throwing out of employment a
number of persons: it behoves us, therefore, to direct attention to
some of the many minor articles in demand;--to those indigenous or
exotic products of the soil in tropical regions, which, being
inexpensive in cultivation and manufacture, might be undertaken with a
moderate outlay of labor and capital, and the certainty of a ready and
remunerative sale in the European markets; and could moreover be
attended to without neglecting or at all interfering with the
cultivation of the leading staples.

It is evident that the export wealth of tropical regions must be
chiefly agricultural, the soil and climate being peculiarly fitted for
the culture of fruits, trees and plants yielding oils, gums, starch,
spices, and other valuable products, which no art can raise cheaply in
more temperate latitudes. The large and continued emigration of
farmers and other enterprising persons from Britain and the Continent
to Natal, the Cape Colony, Northern Australia, Ceylon, the East India
Company's Possessions and the Straits Settlements, Brazil, New
Granada, and the Central American Republics, Texas, the Southern
States of North America, and other tropical and sub-tropical
countries, renders information as to the agriculture and productions
of those regions highly desirable. Even to the settlers in our West
Indian possessions, most of whom have too long pursued the old beaten
track of culture and manufacture, comparatively regardless of modern
improvements and the results of chemical, scientific, and practical
investigation, recent information on all these subjects, and a
comparison of the practices of different countries, cannot fail to be
useful.

There is much valuable information to b