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 be met with in detached papers
and essays in the scientific periodicals of the day, and in colonial
and other publications; such as the Transactions and Journals of the
different agricultural and horticultural societies of the East and