Of all the plants, excepting Indian corn and the potato, which are native to the region under review, none has proved such an unalloyed blessing to civilized man as the cacao-tree. As this tree is unfamiliar to most residents of temperate lands, it may not be unprofitable to transcribe in part a description of it from Rhind's Vegetable Kingdom. The tree is very handsome, from 12 to 16 feet high, with an upright trunk some 5 feet high; the leaves are lanceolate, with entire margins, and of a bright-green colour; the flowers are inconspicuous, reddish, with yellowish sepals; the fruit, attached by short stems to both trunk and branches, has a yellowish and reddish colour, oblong, about 3 inches in length, and consists of a fleshy rind, half an inch thick, containing a white pulp in which are imbedded about 25 seeds. The seeds, when roasted, freed from their husks, and ground, furnish the chocolate so extensively used, especially in France and Spain and in the former Spanish colonies, and is increasing in favour among English-speaking people. Vanilla, which is used in flavouring chocolate as well as many other dishes, was also found in use among the Aztecs at the time of the Spanish conquest. The vanilla-plant is a climbing vine, with lanceolate leaves 18 inches or more in length, and produces a pod containing bean-like seeds. The pods and seeds when properly dried furnish the flavouring extract of commerce. Although the trees which yield rubber in America, as well as the cinchona, from the bark of which quinine is obtained, are justly to be accredited to South America, yet certain varieties of these useful plants occur in Central America and are under cultivation as far northward as central Mexico.