\ PREFACE. 



About five-and-twenty years ago, after some years' practical expe- 

 rience on estates in tlie West Indies, having published numerous 

 essays on Tropical Agriculture in the volumes of my ' Colonial Maga- 

 zine,' and assisted in bringing out an Encyclopaedia of Agriculture, I 

 prepared a work for which there appeared to be a demand, treating of 

 the cultivation, manufacture, and consumption of the chief ' Commer- 

 cial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom.' 



The edition being limited, and chiefly restricted to subscribers, 

 the book has long been scarce, and is greatly in request ; no other 

 writer having since taken up this general field of description, I have 

 been repeatedly asked to reprint the work ; but my various literary 

 engagements and active duties in charge of colonial products at the 

 different international exhibitions have hitherto prevented me from 

 devoting the necessary time and research to the task. 



Last year I was requested by the Lords of the Committee of 

 Council on Education to prepare a work on the commercial products 

 of the Animal Kingdom, and, on completing that volume, it appeared 

 to me that a new edition of my work, ' The Products of the Vegetable 

 Kingdom,' would then form a very suitable companion to it. The old 

 book was, however, unsuited to the practice and wants of the day, 

 and such immense strides and improvements have been made in all the 

 branches of scientific culture and manufacture, that I found it essen- 

 tially necessary to write an entirely new work, merely following, 

 to some extent, the plan and arrangement of the former edition, 

 which had been found useful, and met with general approval. I 

 have introduced many new subjects which have risen into commercial 

 importance, especially the products of the Palm family, and the oils 

 and oil-seeds of commerce ; while others, such as fibrous materials (on 

 which many special hand-books exist), I have not touched upon. I 

 venture to believe that the work will be found practically useful on 

 the subjects it treats of, especially as regards the statistics of pro- 

 duction and consumption, which have been brought down as closely 

 as possible in all cases to the date of publication. 



A 2 



