iv PREFACE. 
ested purposes. I have therefore addressed myself to the task of com- 
piling all the evidence as yet placed at our disposal, strengthening it 
by such new facts as have reached me, and thus completed down to 
the latest moment, present it to the public, in the confident hope that 
it may prove of some interest. 
Since the commencement of our existence as a nation, there has been 
no time more propitious to the introduction of a new sugar bearing 
plant, nor in which a more generous welcome would have been afford- 
ed to it, than the present ; for not only are our planters filled with ap- 
prehensions beeause of the rapid decline of the Antilles sugar cane in 
the southern states, but the article of sugar has become so generally 
an actual necessary of life, and the number of consumers is increasing 
in such accelerated ratio, as to cause the demand to far exceed the 
supply, and thus produce a very considerable enhancement in its 
price. Under the stimulus of this condition of affairs, the manufacture 
of sugar from the sap of the maple tree, has this year been largely in- 
creased ; and official statistics at the end of the year will undoubtedly 
show a crop of maple sugar to have been produced, such as was 
never before obtained in this country. But, although this crop will 
possibly amount to sixty millions of pounds, yet when we come to con- 
sider that in the year 1855, the amount of cane sugar consumed in the 
United States was nine hundred and nineteen millions of pounds, we 
are made sensible of the national interest in procuring an undiminished 
annual source of supply, beyond any that could be afforded by a natural] 
increase in the yield of maple sugar. 
The sugar crop of 1855, as compared with that of the previous year, 
showed a decrease of nearly two per cent., and the evil has since then 
assumed such magnitude as to influence cur General Government to ap- 
propriate a large sum of money, and to send a ship to the West 
Indies and other adjacent tropical countries, for the purpose of pro- 
