staple product, however remunerative it may appear in prospective.
Facility and cost of transport to the nearest market or shipping port
are the next desiderata to be ascertained, as well as a careful
estimate of the cost of plant or machinery necessary.

It may be desirable at the outset to make a brief enumeration of the
countries lying within the different zones, and the agricultural
products of which come, therefore, more especially under the notice of
the tropical planter.

Meyen, in his division of the horizontal range of vegetation into
zones, extends--

1. The equatorial zone to fifteen degrees on both sides of the
equator. In this division we shall find the Cape Verd Islands, Sierra
Leone, Ascension, and St. Helena, the Republic of Liberia, the
European and native settlements in the Gulf of Guinea, and on the
western Coast of Africa, Abyssinnia, Zanzibar on the East Coast,
Mocha and Aden in the Red Sea, the northern portion of Madagascar, the
Seychelles, the Madras Presidency, Northern India, Ceylon and the
Nicobar Islands, Sumatra, Siam, Malacca, Singapore and the Straits
Settlements, Cochin China, the Phillippine Islands, Borneo, Celebes
and the Moluccas, Java and Madura, Banca, the Johore Archipelago,
Timor and the eastern group of Islands, with New Guinea, a large
portion of Northern Australia, the Marquesas, Society's and other
oceanic islands. In South America the Republics of Peru, Bolivia,
Ecuador, New Granada, and Venezuela, British, French and Dutch Guiana,
and a large portion of the empire of Brazil; Trinidad, Barbados, and
most of the islands in the Carribean Sea.