Hoiv to Expand 55 



Among these economic products must be included sugar, 

 coco-nut products, vegetable oils, cotton, cereals, and 

 camphor. There are others, but these will lead, no matter 

 what else may follow, and camphor, cotton, and vegetable 

 oils must always be in the forefront. 



Returning for the moment to the work being done in 

 America in connection with caniphor production and 

 extraction, that country is wise enough to realize what a 

 lot depends, if the industry is to prove a permanent com- 

 mercial success, on the satisfactory and, therefore, re- 

 munerative recovery of the gum from the leaves and twigs, 

 for it is claimed over there that the industry can be run to 

 pay without the destruction of the tree itself, in order to 

 secure the wood chips to distil from. To what extent 

 such a view is correct remains to be seen. In reference to 

 this, one regrets that fuller particulars have not been 

 published concerning either the original or the newer 

 machine used in Florida for clipping the leaves and twigs 

 from the trees, especially as, according to the reports, 

 " The success or failure to grow camphor trees on a scale 

 large enough for commercial purposes stands or falls on 

 the successful operation of this machine." 



CHAPTER IX. 



By making Trinidad or another West Indian 

 Island the " Hong Kong of the West." 



Tropical Life, April, 191 5. 



SoMK twenty years ago Mr. R. H. McCarthy, C.M.G., 

 who is now in charge of the Colombian Railways in 

 London, occupied the post of Collector of Customs at Port 

 of Spain, the capital of the Island of Trinidad, which 

 celebrated its hundred years of British Rule in 1897, when 

 our Editor was in the Island, and had the pleasure of 

 serving on the Committee that arranged the public 

 festivities, which included a ball, dinners to the poor, 

 fireworks, and illuminations on a most lavish scale. 



Shortly after this Mr. McCarthy, addressing a closely 



