12 
INTRODUCTION. 
politic also to imitate their general appearance and style of 
packing, &c. Broker^ and merchants go largely by appear¬ 
ances in judging qualities of the products they handle, and 
consequently even a superior quality is liable to be over¬ 
looked or undervalued if its appearance be unfamiliar. 
The general appearance and make up of the various products 
is briefly touched upon in the chapters which follow, and 
an endeavour is being made to provide the Peradeniya 
Economic Museum with good samples of every kind to 
enable local cultivators and others to know as far as possible 
what to aim at. 
The salient feature of the economic history of Ceylon in 
the past century has been a series of “ booms ” in different 
economic products, hitherto cultivated only by the native 
tropical races of men or only collected from wild plants. 
One by one, coffee, cinchona, tea, cacao, cardamoms, india- 
rubber, &c., have arisen into prominence. When Ceylon 
has tried to compete with the products of other European 
tropical colonies, the result has been less conspicuously 
successful—we may instance the cases of tobacco, sugar, 
nutmegs, ginger, pepper. Cacao is successful here, but when 
first taken up was not largely cultivated anywhere by 
Europeans. The history of the century now beginning will 
almost certainly be very different. Practically all products 
of any value in the tropics are now being cultivated by 
Europeans, and the resources of science, politics, &c., 
brought into play. The days of cheap success are over or 
nearly over, and those of more difficult competition are 
setting in. Ceylon occupies at present a most favourable 
position—a central location in the eastern seas, unlimited, 
cheap, and docile labour, a good climate for vegetation, great 
range of climates and soils, good road and railway carriage, 
plentiful freight to the great markets, and last but most 
important, well-established industries with great reputations 
for their products on the markets of the world, managed by 
experienced, enterprising, and capable men. She has, how* 
ever, in the past century, almost completely lost several of 
