INTRODUCTOKY. 



THE want of a practical work treating of the cultivation and ma- 

 nufacture of the chief Agricultural Productions of the Tropics and 

 Foreign Countries, has long been felt, for not even separate essays 

 are to be met with on very many of the important subjects treated 

 of in this volume. 



The requirements of several friends proceeding to settle in the 

 Colonies, and wishing to devote themselves to Cotton culture, 

 Coffee planting, the raising of Tobacco, Indigo, and other agricul- 

 tural staples, first called my attention to the consideration of this 

 fertile and extensive field of investigation. 



Professor Solly, in one of the series of Lectures on the results 

 of the Great Exhibition, delivered before the Society of Arts, 

 early last year, made some practical remarks bearing on the 

 subject : 



"If (he said) you -were to place before any manufacturer specimens of all 

 the substances which could be employed in his particular manufacture, and if 

 you could tell him from whence each could be procured, its cost, the quantities 

 in which he might obtain it, and its physical and chemical properties, he would 

 soon be able to select for himself the one best suited for his purposes. This, 

 however, has never happened in relation to any one art ; in every case manu- 

 facturers have had to make the best of the materials which chance or accident 

 has brought before them. It is strange and startling, but nevertheless per- 

 fectly true, that even at the present time there are many excellent and abun- 

 dant productions of nature with which not only our manufacturers, but, in 

 some instances, even our men of science, are wholly unacquainted. There is 

 not a single book published which gives even tolerably complete information on 

 any one of the different classes of vegetable raw produce at present under our con- 

 sideration. The truth of these remarks will be felt strongly by any one who 

 takes the trouble to examine any of these great divisions of raw materials. 

 He will obtain tolerably complete information respecting most of those substances 

 which are known in trade and commerce ; but of the greater number of those 

 not known to the broker, he will learn little or nothing. Men of science, for 

 the most part, look down upon such knowledge. The practical uses of any 

 substances, the wants and difficulties of the manufacturer, are regarded as mere 

 trade questions, vulgar and low simple questions of money. On the other 

 hand, mere men of business do not feel the want of such knowledge, because, 

 in the first place, they are ignorant of its existence, and secondly, because they 

 do not see how it could aid them or their business ; and if it should happen 

 that an enterprising manufacturer desires to learn something of the cultivation 

 and production of the raw material with which he works, he generally finds 

 it quite impossible to obtain any really sound and useful information. In s;:ch 

 cases, if he is a man of energy and of capital, he often is at the cost of sending 



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