em 
; ee a os [ 300} 
pe ane Ng tfully reminds the department, that the sucecesttl experi- 
dee janeiro have demonstrated that the tea plant of southern Chi- 
y arrive at maturity in the arid danas of any eopical climate ; 
and th Piheir plucked leaves are speedily hy a be for exportation by the 
most simple apparatus and the most ignorant laborers. The absurd sighed 
heretofore told about the different and difficult processes of dr the 
_ leaves, and the extremely troublesome and tedious il sea te of iting 
them, adapted only to the starving, cheap labor of a Chinese crowded popu- 
lation, have been all positively contradicted by the Pascal observation of 
respectable Americans, in Brazil; and for the intelligent testimony of, proba- 
bly Dr, Mg it the department i is respectfully referred to the New York Far- 
mer, for 1828, pages 105-7. We thus arrive at the important gen- 
eral result, that the “only tedious operation from the planting of the slips to 
the selling of the tea, is the light labor of the feeble in sex, age, or health, to 
pick and assort the successive cro ps of the green leaves; tha tone man may 
cure and prepare for market the entire produce of sixteen acres ; that the 
plants of two feet high, four feet apart, will yield an annual average of three 
pounds of leaves, or “upwards of eight thousand per acre; and that hence, 
attaching the highest value to American labor of all ages and sexes, and *e 
abilities, the production of tea, at even one- a ‘a a3 price of solely the ~ 
average duties yet added in our ports, or fiftee s a pound, will afford 
much more profitable employment to Koa capil Sr any actual 
branch of American agriculture. ; 
~ But there is another’ plant and product of the East india, which can be 
so much more profitably propagated in our tropical territory, than even in 
our warmest extra-tropical districts, that our coldest States are actually sin- 
ning against the now established policy of the nation, and against the fu- 
ture prosperity of their own citizens, in epee a their war against nature 
to force the domestications of the many-stemmed mulberry tree of Manilla, 
and the tender silkworm of southern China, although not more than one 
crop of cocoons will be the average annual reward of their mistaken labors. 
In Guadaloupe, the French Goverament sustains an establishment of 40,000 
ed 
in (on b Protec? Sagra, ‘of the royal botanical te and pattern plan- 
tation, near Havana, it is ‘demonstrated that ten successiv e crops of cocoons 
every year, may be obtained from the perpetually unfolding leaves of this 
valuable exotic in tropical clim ates, and consequently in tropical Florida. 
Let, then, New England send to this productive climate only one-tenth of her 
surplas population now unprofitably empioyed in the production 4 cocoons, 
much more profitable employment in ad manufacture of silk skate It re- 
mains to be decided by our civilized citizens whether it will be still more 
profitable to propagate the social fern of the evergreen food of the 
forests by Vera Cruz, which spin cocoons of two to eight | ng!! 
One species of the indigo plant grows wild in the lie of Florida, 
and in the southern divisions will yield four crops a yea by adding differ- 
ent species which mature at successive periods, the ue Pauntity “collect- 
may be increased to an indefinite amount ; ’ the ma ny leaved species 0 
Senegal which flourishes ae the dryest sites in the dryest times, seems des- 
sage o form as importan an auxiliary te the epeeencvon of sndigs, as the 
