president’s ADDRESS — SECTION E. 
125 
and orchard fruits of all kinds pertaining to temperate or cool climes. 
Even the simpler musical instruments would afford means for elevating 
and refining the native races, who are generally susceptible to the 
influence of musical art. 1 may be permitted to give to this address 
at once a practical turn by specifying and summing up what goods 
would be likely to figure prominently in our exports to the British 
colonies in eastern tropical Africa, omitting what are not productions 
of our own, but only transit goods. The articles which we could 
display are more varied and multitudinous than might bethought at first 
sight. # Respecting raw produce, tariffs and wages rates of course 
must largely influence the choice in these trading operations, though 
it may be expected that these will get gradually more equalised all 
over the world. 
The imports from Eastern Africa could be only limited, as factories 
for working up raw materials available from thence arc as yet but 
few in our colonies, and as the generality of tropical products are to 
us still closer at hand. But merchant vessels taking Australian 
freight to the eastern harbours of Africa could reckon ou securing 
from there loading for Loudon, and return with English merchandise 
to our ports. 
With what gigantic strides any particular trade can advance 
could be exemplified by manifold instances. Thus, Mr. George S. 
Mackenzie some few years ago emphasised this by a striking fact. In 
1875 the first box of dates was shipped from Busrah in Mesopotamia, 
but in recent years the export from that harbour has been 20,000 tons 
annually. AVJiat for tea and cinchona culture has been done in 
British India during the last two decades might he quoted as similar 
instances. The gentleman who effected the first shipment of rice 
from Burinah is still a living witness of noticing the export to have 
been in one of the latter years about 1,250,000 tons, at a value of more 
than £2,500,000 sterling. Sir John Kirk, the companion of Living- 
stone s first Zambesi expedition, brought under commercial cognisance 
the Landolphia climber for African indiarubber. Now, this 
substance of almost endless applicability has arisen, as Mr. Mackenzie 
remarks, to about £'J 00,000 in value annually as shipped from 
Zanzibar. All such successes have been brought about in the first 
instance by geographic explorations, whether by naval surveys or by 
land expeditions, in which among all nations, considering the work 
of the world in this respect as a whole, Britain constantly takes 
the lead. The political outcome of all these achievements, through 
pioneers of our favourite science, has been to raise the British Empire 
above every other in territorial expansion and solid wealth, and to 
carry its language, as the prevailing one, over the greater part of the 
globe. But such considerations should give an additional impetus to 
further explorations, especially at a period when universal depression 
r i* atoc k» including horses. select breeds of fowl, flour, potatoes, dried fruits, 
timber fitted for various structures, including material for wood-paving of qualities 
resisting termites, railway sleepers, piles, compressed hay, chaff, stable corn, rural seeds, 
coals, honest ones, strong shoes and boots, saddlery, blankets, mattresses, stockings 
and other coarse wool fabrics, ropes and cordage, soap, candles, preserved meat, 
whale oil, butter, cheese, wines, biscuits, vegetables, dried fruits, starches, vinegar, 
rough paper, furniture, agricultural implements, mining machinery, carts, carriages, 
boats, musical instruments, fire-bricks, gold ornaments and other jewellery ; last, and 
not least, current coins of our own mints, perhaps for land purchased. 
