r the purpose in her annual remittance of about 16,000
lbs.;(6) nor what quantity of almonds is abstracted, with a similar view,
from the 9000 cwts. we retain for our own consumption from the
importations from Spain and Northern Africa. Currants are more to our
purpose--for that small Corinth grape, the produce of the islands of Zante,
Cephalonia, and Ithaca, and of the Morea, which comes to us so thickly
coated with dust that we might seem to import vineyard and all--belongs,
like the candied peel, almost exclusively to cakes and puddings. Of this
fruit we devour in the year about 180,000 cwts. Raisins, being in more
general use--at the dessert, for instance, and in making sweet wine--are in
still greater demand; we can not do with less than 240,000 cwts of them.
They are named from the place where they grow--such as Smyrna or Valencia;
or from the grape--such as muscatel, bloom, or sultana; but the quality
depends, we believe, chiefly on the mode of cure. The best are called
raisins of the sun, and are preserved by cutting half through the stalks
of the branches when nearly ripe, and leaving them to dry and candy in the
genial rays. The next quality is gathered when completely ripe, dipped in
a lye of the ashes of the burned tendrils, and spread out to bake in the
sun. The inferior is dried in an oven. The black Smyrna grape is the
cheapest; and the muscatels of Malaga are the dearest.

With flour, sugar, brandy, &c., we do not propose to interfere; for
although the quantities of these articles thus consumed are immense, they
bear but a small proportion to the whole importations. Eggs, however, are
in a different category. Eggs are essential to the whole pudding race; and
without having our minds opened, as they now are, to the full greatness of
the plum-pudding, it would be difficult for us to discover the rationale
of the vast trade we carry on in eggs. In our youthful days, when, as yet,
plum-puddingism was with us in its early, empirical state, we used to
consider "egg-merchant" a term of ridicule, resembling the term
"timber-merchant," as applied to a vender of matches. But we now look with
respect upon an egg-merchant, as an individual who manages an important
part of the trade of this country with France and Belgium; not to mention
its internal traffic in the same commodity. It strikes us, however, that
on this subject the Frenchman and Belgian are wiser in their generation
than ourselves. We could produce our ow