The extent of the trade during the time of the Dutch may be inferred from the fact, that the five principal cinnamon-gardens around Nejombo, Colombo, Barberyn, Galle, and Maduro were each from fifteen to twenty miles in circumference. Although they were only first planted in the year 1770, yet before 1796, when Colombo was taken by the English, their annual produce amounted to more than 400,000 lbs. of cinnamon, as much as the demands of the market required. The profits must have been enormous, for cinnamon was then at least ten times dearer than at present, the trade being exclusively in the hands of the Dutch East Indian Company, which, in order to keep up the price, restricted the production to a certain quantity, and watched over its monopoly with the most jealous tyranny. No one was allowed to plant cinnamon or to peel it, and the selling or importing of a single stick was punished as a capital offence. Since that time the cultivation of the cinnamon laurel having been introduced into many other tropical lands, competition has reduced prices, and the spice which was formerly the main product of Ceylon is now of very inferior importance. The cinnamon-gardens, whose beauty and luxuriance has been so often vaunted by travellers, have partly been sold, partly leased to private individuals, and though less than a century has elapsed since they were formed by the Dutch, they are already becoming a wilderness. Those which surround Colombo on the land side exhibit the effects of a quarter of a century of neglect, and produce a feeling of disappointment and melancholy. The beautiful shrubs which furnish this spice have been left to the wild growth of nature, and in some places are entirely supplanted by an undergrowth of jungle, while in others a thick cover of climbing plants and other parasites conceals them under masses of verdure and blossom. It would, however, be erroneous to suppose that the cinnamon-gardens have been universally doomed to the same neglect. Thus Professor Schmarda, who visited Mr. Stewart’s plantation two miles to the south of Colombo, admired the beautiful order in which it was kept. A reddish sandy clay and fine white quartz sand form the soil of the plantation. White sand is considered as the best ground for the cinnamon tree to grow on, but it requires an abundance of rain (which is never wanting in the south-western part of the island), much sun, and many termites. For these otherwise so destructive creatures do not injure the cinnamon trees, but render themselves useful by destroying many other insects. They consequently remain unmolested, and everywhere raise their high conical mounds in the midst of the plantation. The aspect of a well-conditioned cinnamon-garden is rather monotonous, for though the trees when left to their full growth attain a height of forty or fifty feet, yet, as the best spice is furnished by the shoots that spring from the roots after