Report of the Agricultural Committee. 27. 



tatoes, dec, are an unfailing resource for the small culti- 

 vator, who has many modes of varying his crops, so as to 

 preservehis seilfrom exhaustion. It will become the province 

 of the better educated portion of the community to impart, 

 to the best of their ability, information on such matters to 

 the poorer cultivators ; and this is one of the ways, amongst 

 others of greater importance connected with our staple in- 

 dustry, in which the knowledge of Agricultural Chemistry, in 

 its present advanced state, might be so useful to the colony; 

 and which renders it so desirable that some one of our 

 young Creoles, now completing, by the liberality of Govern- 

 ment, their studies at home, should direct a portion of his 

 time to the subject, for the future benefit of his country. 



While, by the means above alluded to, daily support is 

 insured, preparations might be made for supplying, even- 

 tually, other products for sale. Sufficient Tobacco and Cot- 

 ton for the wants of the place, at all events, might be 

 grown. It is not so long that the latter was selling here, 

 for domestic purposes, at 25 d" per 7o. or a shilling a pound ; 

 the price at home for the kind required for such wants being 

 about 3pence. Tapioca and Arrow Root have become articles of 

 trade, and both might be produced here in considerable quanti- 

 ty. Vanilla is pspecially deserving of notice, and the Home 

 (lovernmenl ought to be memorialized respecting the high 

 rale of duly at present attached to it, which operates against 

 its cultivation in the British Colonies, and its consumption 

 in Great Britain. The culture of Tea has not. unfortunate- 

 ly, extended as was anticipated, although the small quan- 

 tity produced here was considered of very good quality, and 

 was an earnest, at one time, of a new staple for the Island. 

 The Committee adverted to the subject of fruits in its last 

 Report— instead of being comparalely poor iniir.apes, Fij58 



