394 TlMHERI. 



the Planters' Association, at which resolutions dealing 

 with the Royal Commissioners' Report were passed. 

 Some complaints have since been made that the meeting 

 confined itself to one subject of discussion — the desir- 

 ability of the cessation of bounties on sugar, or of the 

 imposition of countervailing duties. When the failure 

 of the efforts to obtain these, to my mind, almost certain 

 remedies for our present distress, has taken place, then 

 will be the time for discussion of the very few sugges- 

 tions offered by the Commissioners or by Dr. Morris on 

 the cultivation of economic agricultural produces to take 

 the place of our present staple. 



The latter has alluded to the great fertility of the 

 interior of the Colony. I do not know on what grounds 

 he based his supposition of this great fertility. I can find 

 no grounds for believing that in a country having the geo- 

 logical structure the interior of this has — sandstones and 

 some hundred of conglomerates, archean granites, gneisis 

 and crystalline schists — great tracts of land of excep- 

 tional fertility will occur, although possibly tracts of 

 limited area may occur in valley land and river bottoms 

 or on the lines of dykes of certain classes of intrusive 

 rocks. I may mention that as far as our analytical ex- 

 aminations of some hundreds of the soils of the interior 

 and seaboard of the Colony extend, no indication of ex- 

 ceptional fertility in soils, other than those of our alluvial 

 coastlands, have been obtained. All point to the wisdom 

 of our Dutch predecessors in ceasing their attempts to 

 raise economic agricultural products on many of the soils 

 of the interior. 



In my January address I alluded to the necessity of 

 the Agricultural Committee dealing with certain obscure 



