316 SIR RODERICK I. MUKCHISON'S ADDRESS— AFRICA. [May 23, 1859. 



indigenous plant, has at all events been long acclimated. The 

 Cotton-Supply Association, formed at Manchester, has not only- 

 been made up of those persons who look to a future increase of 

 produce, but has been liberally supported by many philanthropists, 

 who hope that the cultivation of the plant by the natives of Africa 

 may produce a salutary change in putting an end to the slave-trade. 

 One of the active supporters of this institution is Miss Burdett 

 Coutts — a lady eminently distinguished by the kind, judicious, and 

 practical application of her wealth. Among other efforts, this 

 Association has caused a map on a large scale to be published, 

 pointing out with much sagacity in colours the localities which 

 appear, from fertility and means of transport, to be most eligible 

 for the "growth of cotton. Already a small supply of fair cotton 

 has been brought to England from the Western Coast of Africa ; 

 and it is also asserted that the plant flourishes in abundance in the 

 Fiji Islands. 



Although it is not unlikely that Africa may hereafter supply our 

 manufactures with a much larger amount of cotton than at present, 

 the probability is that in such a country other articles better suited to 

 the rude condition of the people will be preferred to it. We have a 

 remarkable instance of this in the supply of the strong and useful 

 oil which we import, the produce of a palm, Elais Guiniensis, a 

 native of the Western Coast, and which, although the trade is of 

 barely forty years' standing, we imported in 1857, as Mr. John 

 Crawfurd informs me, to the extraordinary value of more than 

 1,800,000L The same country is, without a doubt, well calculated 

 to produce other oil-yielding vegetables like those we have been of 

 late years receiving from India, such as linseed, rape, mustard, and 

 sesame ; all of them plants easily raised when compared with 

 cotton. Already there has been imported from the Western Coast 

 of Africa a still more valuable oil, which goes under the name 

 of shea butter. This is the produce of one of the plants of the 

 natural order Sapotaceae, as is also the vegetable tallow which 

 we have recently imported from the Malay Islands. The veget- 

 able wax of Japan, of which, as already mentioned, a cargo has 

 been imported within the last three weeks from that empire, is 

 the produce of the Ehus succedaneum. I may add, that the voyagers 

 up the Yang-tse-Keang have brought with them specimens of a more 

 valuable article than any of these, insect-wax, the product of an 

 insect which feeds and forms its nidus on a species of ash, Fraxinus 

 HanburU. This was obtained at the mart of Han-Kow, where it 



