434 EVENING DISCOURSES 



Important Food Accessories. — Spices and condiments are supplied from 

 India and the colonies, and include pepper, cloves, nutmegs, cinnamon, 

 desiccated coconut, and ginger. Among beverages maybe mentioned cocoa, 

 tea, coffee and wines (South Africa and Australia). 



Gums, Resins and Drying Oils, of great importance in our manufactures, 

 include linseed from India and Canada, tung oil (experimental in many 

 parts of the Empire), rubber from Malaya, Ceylon and Southern India, gum 

 arable from West Africa, the Sudan and Somaliland, kauri gum from New 

 Zealand, balata from British Guiana, and turpentine from India, British 

 Honduras and the Bahamas. 



Among some important Drugs, Medicines, etc., may be mentioned cinchona 

 from India, chaulmoogra, which has recently been introduced to many of our 

 tropical colonies as a cure for leprosy, and liquorice grown at Pontefract. 



Tobacco comes to us from South Africa, Nyasaland, Rhodesia, Jamaica, 

 Mauritius, Cyprus and India. 



Clothing includes cotton from India, the Sudan, the West Indies, Nigeria, 

 Uganda, etc. 



Tanning materials include wattle barks from South and East Africa, and 

 sumach from Cyprus. 



For transport we have timber for ships, wharves and lock gates ; fibres for 

 ropes (Mauritius hemp, and sisal from Kenya and Tanganyika) ; kapok for 

 lifebelts. 



In the more thickly populated parts of the Empire, the possibility of 

 exporting vegetable products is dependent on the peoples of these countries 

 being able to provide themselves with food. In the humid tropics the main 

 food products consist chiefly of rice and root-crops such as taroes, eddoes, 

 tannias, yautias, yams, tapioca and sweet potatoes, while in the dry tropics 

 they consist of sorghums and various small millets, numerous pulse crops 

 largely replacing the necessity for meat. In certain parts of Africa, also, 

 the plantain and banana are the staple food crops of certain tribes. This is 

 an aspect of Empire production which is liable to be lost sight of, as the 

 resulting products do not appear on the world's markets, and attention is 

 only drawn to their importance in times of famine and crop failure. 



There is also an immense amount of vegetable production within the 

 Empire, grown as grazing and fodder for live stock, which comes to this 

 country in the form of dairy produce, wool, meat, etc. 



There are, again, vegetable industries which have disappeared or are 

 disappearing on account of the production of synthetic substitutes, or on 

 account of changes in fashion. Of the former, indigo, camphor and vanilla 

 are examples ; of the latter. Sea Island cotton, and most spinning fibres. 

 Jute is decreasing in demand on account of the bulk handling of grain, etc., 

 while cotton and flax have a strong competitor in artificial silk. All these 

 are, or were, important Empire products. 



