The other constituents of a plum-pudding add but little testimony on the subject of number. We can not even guess the proportion of the 170,000 lbs. of nutmegs we receive from the Moluccas, and our own possessions in the Malay Straits, which may be thus employed; nor how much cinnamon Ceylon sends us for the purpose in her annual remittance of about 16,000 lbs.;(6) nor what quantity of almonds is abstracted, with a similar view, from the 9000 cwts. we retain for our own consumption from the importations from Spain and Northern Africa. Currants are more to our purpose—for that small Corinth grape, the produce of the islands of Zante, Cephalonia, and Ithaca, and of the Morea, which comes to us so thickly coated with dust that we might seem to import vineyard and all—belongs, like the candied peel, almost exclusively to cakes and puddings. Of this fruit we devour in the year about 180,000 cwts. Raisins, being in more general use—at the dessert, for instance, and in making sweet wine—are in still greater demand; we can not do with less than 240,000 cwts of them. They are named from the place where they grow—such as Smyrna or Valencia; or from the grape—such as muscatel, bloom, or sultana; but the quality depends, we believe, chiefly on the mode of cure. The best are called raisins of the sun, and are preserved by cutting half through the stalks of the branches when nearly ripe, and leaving them to dry and candy in the genial rays. The next quality is gathered when completely ripe, dipped in a lye of the ashes of the burned tendrils, and spread out to bake in the sun. The inferior is dried in an oven. The black Smyrna grape is the cheapest; and the muscatels of Malaga are the dearest.