GENTIAN.

IPECACUAN.




INTRODUCTORY.

The want of a practical work treating of the cultivation and
manufacture of the chief Agricultural Productions of the Tropics and
Foreign Countries, has long been felt, for not even separate essays
are to be met with on very many of the important subjects treated of
in this volume.

The requirements of several friends proceeding to settle in the
Colonies, and wishing to devote themselves to Cotton culture, Coffee
planting, the raising of Tobacco, Indigo, and other agricultural
staples, first called my attention to the consideration of this
fertile and extensive field of investigation.

Professor Solly, in one of the series of Lectures on the results of
the Great Exhibition, delivered before the Society of Arts, early last
year, made some practical remarks bearing on the subject:--

"If (he said) you were to place before any manufacturer specimens of
all the substances which could be employed in his particular
manufacture, and if you could tell him from whence each could be
procured, its cost, the quantities in which he might obtain it, and
its physical and chemical properties, he would soon be able to