uncommon thing; and many cases might be stated, showing the great
advantages which have arisen to those who have thus gained a march
upon their neighbours."

The Society of Arts, appreciating the importance of from time to time
encouraging the introduction of new and improved products from our
Indian and Colonial Possessions, has offered many gold medals as
premiums for a great variety of staples from abroad.

The Great Exhibition of the Industry of all Nations brought together
an immense variety of productions from tropical regions, of which the
English public were comparatively ignorant. Attracting public
attention, as these necessarily did, information on the best modes of
cultivating and manufacturing them will be peculiarly valuable to the
colonists, and is as eagerly sought after by many brokers, merchants
and manufacturers 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