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24 BOTANICAL INFORMATIOK, 



interesting in themselves, are too amall in bulk to render it possible 

 that tlieir value as articles of trade can be accurately determined. The 

 Committee therefore think, that a portion of the time and talents of 

 the Superintendent of the Botanical Garden might be employed with 

 advantage to the Colony in organizing arrangements for the prepara- 

 tion, on account of Government, of a ton or two of each of those fibres 

 that may be procured from plants commonly met with either in the 

 jungles or upon lands belonging to the natives of the country, in order 

 that such specimens may be forwarded to London, to be reported upon 

 and sold, and their value be thus satisfactorily ascertained. 



"As soon as this information has been procured, the Committee sug- 



A 



gest that a popular account should be published, in the English and 

 native languages, of the plants producing the fibre, the most econo- 

 mical and the best mode of preparing them, the cost, or the number of 

 days' labour required to produce a hundredweight of each description, 

 together with any other similar details and particulars that would be 



important or useful. 



"The Committee recommend this course, because, in order to render 

 any discovery largely beneficial to the colony, it is indispensable that 

 it be suited to the habits of the mass of the people, and of a nature 

 likely to be adopted by them ; and although very little success has yet 

 attended the efforts that have been made to tempt the people of the 

 country to new fields of enterprise, the Committee think there has been 

 just enough to show that it is not actually impossible to accomplish 

 this desirable object. As an instance of success, they mention the rea- 

 diness with which the natives have brought in for sale great quantities 

 of coir, prepared so as to be used instead of bristles in the manufacture 

 of certain kinds of brushes ; and it is well known that the demand for 

 coir, prepared precisely in this manner, dates only from the commence- 

 ment of the war in which Great Britain is now engaged with Russia* 



Another reason why discoveries, to be useful, should be applicable to the 

 mass of the population, exists in the fact that in villages, remote from 



+ 



the principal towns, the value of labour must be extremely small ; this 

 is evidenced by the price at which some articles, which are manufactured 

 in such locahties, are brought forward for sale in the markets of the 

 different leading towns," 



p 



