Many things that may now be purchased in the city are not brought to the market at all. Good boots and shoes are increasing in numbers: and the natives work them neatly: but the sole-leather is poor and ill tanned. House furniture on English patterns can be made to order: sideboards, wardrobes, tables and chairs, can be purchased at moderate rates. The native carpenters also produce all the fittings of schools and churches, window frames, and Venetian shutters, and doors and flooring for houses. To me the prices of all these things were an object of constant amusement; they were so low. A lady would tell her cook to bring home from the market six-pennyworth of sirloin; and receive some five lbs. of beef as the result. I once sent into the Capital a bushel and a half of potatoes for which I paid a shilling. Common pine-apples came into the market, five hundred for a dollar, that is ten for a penny: beautiful pine-apples were a penny each: a large dishful of good mangoes cost twopence. Beams and rafters, four inches by six, and twelve feet long, would cost from sevenpence to tenpence each. We used to get forty eggs for a shilling in the city: in the country they had a fancy price and were a penny each. A large turkey cost a shilling: a fat fowl, twopence. Wages are of course low in a country like this: they are lower even than in India: but food is also much cheaper. In one district we found that sixty lbs. weight of maize was sold for threepence: rice was equally cheap and plentiful. With improvements, expenses are increasing, and prices are slowly rising: security, honesty, diligence properly demand higher wages; and they furnish in abundance those increased resources by which such wages are paid. With increase of civilisation, production and sales there has naturally arisen an increased demand for money. The Malagasy have no coin of their own: and the want is supplied by a constant importation of French silver. The only coin which passes current with the people is the five-franc piece, which has the value of a dollar, i.e. four shillings. The whole piece represents what is a large sum to a Malagasy. To provide therefore for small payments the dollars are cut into halves, quarters, eighths, and smaller pieces. Some men can get six hundred pieces out of a dollar, each piece having a portion of the stamp on it. This broken money is sold or paid by weight: and every household, English or native, has its little weights and scales for the purpose. Coins of the Malagasy government, both silver and copper, of various values, will be a great improvement on this inconvenient system. But it will take time to introduce them. I learned in India that on no subject are natives so sensitive as on that of coined money.