There are annually about seventeen thousand persons, men, women, and children, engaged in weaving silk; their looms are simple, and their work is generally executed with neatness. The number of persons engaged in manufacturing cloth of all kinds, is about fifty thousand; when the demand is pressing for work, the number of labourers is considerably increased; the workmen occupy about two thousand, five hundred shops, averaging, usually, twenty in each. We have heard it said, that some of the Chinese females, who devote their time to embroidering the choicest of the fabrics, secure a profit of twenty and sometimes even twenty-five dollars per month. Shoemakers are numerous and support an extensive trade, the number of workmen being about four thousand, two hundred. The number of those who work in brass, wood, iron, stone, and various other materials, is likewise large. Those who engage in each of these occupations form, to a certain degree, a separate community, having their distinct laws and rules for the regulation of business. The book-trade of Canton is important, but we have not been able to obtain particulars in relation to its extent. The _barbers_ form a separate department, and no one is allowed to perform the duties of tonsor until he has obtained a license. According to their records, the number of this fraternity in Canton, at the present time, is seven thousand, three hundred! There is another body of men, which we know not how to designate or describe; the _medical community_; which must not be passed over without notice. That these men command high respect and esteem whenever they show themselves skilled in their profession, there can be no doubt; it is generally admitted, also, that individuals do now and then, by long experience and observation, become able practitioners; but, as a community, they are anything rather than masters of the “healing art.” About two thousand of these “physicians” dwell in Canton.