uncommon thing; and many cases might be stated, showing the great advantages which have arisen to those who have thus gained a march upon their neighbours." The Society of Arts, appreciating the importance of from time to time encouraging the introduction of new and improved products from our Indian and Colonial Possessions, has offered many gold medals as premiums for a great variety of staples from abroad. The Great Exhibition of the Industry of all Nations brought together an immense variety of productions from tropical regions, of which the English public were comparatively ignorant. Attracting public attention, as these necessarily did, information on the best modes of cultivating and manufacturing them will be peculiarly valuable to the colonists, and is as eagerly sought after by many brokers, merchants and manufacturers at home. In consequence of the recent liberal policy of Great Britain, the competition of foreign countries, the want of cheap and abundant labor, and other causes, those chief staples, Sugar and Coffee, which for a series of years formed the principal and almost exclusive articles of production in our colonies, and which had met with a ready and remunerative sale in the British markets, have either fallen off to an alarming extent, or become so reduced in price as scarcely to repay the cost of cultivation. The partial abandonment of the cultivation of these staples in our colonies has had the effect of crippling the agricultural and commercial enterprise of several of our most valuable foreign possessions, and throwing out of employment a number of persons: it behoves us, therefore, to direct attention to some of the many minor articles in demand;--to those indigenous or 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.