INTRODUCTION. 
politic also to imitate their general appearance and sty! & of 
packing, & c . Brokers and merchants go largely by appear- 
ances in judging qualities of the prodncte they handle, and 
consequently even a enperior quality is liable to be over¬ 
looked or undervalued if ite appearance be nnfamiliar. 
Ihe general appearance and make up of the various products 
18 briefly touched upon in the chapters -which follow, and 
an endeavour is being made to provide the Peradeniya 
kconomic Museum with good samples of every kind to 
enable local cultivators and others to know as far as possible 
he salient feature of the economic history of Ceylon in 
he past century has been a series of “booms” in different 
economic products, hitherto cultivated only bv the native 
tropical races of men or only collected from wild plants. 
^bb! 7 T r** CinCh0nai *“’ cardamoms, India- 
r, c., have arisen into prominence. When Ceylon 
ms tried to compete with the products of other European 
tropical^ co lonies, the result has been less conspicuously 
cesstul_we may instance the cases of tobacco, sugar, 
nutmegs, ginger, pepper. Cacao is successful here, but when 
ci 6n U r ^ was not lar & el y cultivated anywhere by 
- The hi8t0ryof ‘^century now beJnningwiU 
m ‘ he “ unlimited, 
plentiful freight to the carria * e ’ 
important . . T 1 - , g t markets > and last but most 
for their nrod * 1S ^ indnstriea with great reputations 
° n ^ of the world, maLged by 
’ * *“ T- •>»-* completely lost several of 
