The British Guiana Exhibition. 103 
vast collections of miscellaneous objects even now, 
though most of them are sent with no practicable design 
of utilizing them commercially, may be of great service 
in that they serve to show the outside world the wealth 
which is really to be had here, so that the day may come 
when some one, noting these things, may examine into the 
question of how far these small industries might be devel- 
oped and extend into great commercial undertakings. 
It may be as well here to point out that the usefulness 
of such Exhibitions might be enormously increased if it 
were part of the duty, we might almost suggest the chief 
duty, of the Exhibition Committee to select such products 
as seem most promising, and to enquire into the possi- 
bility of utilizing these, by having the exhibited samples 
properly analysed, so as to ascertain their quality, and by 
further enquiring as to the best means of collecting in 
large quantities those which prove to be of real value. 
For example, at the recent exhibition there was a really 
fine show of barks used medicinally by the negroes and 
aborigines of this colony. To the thoughtless, these 
rows of bundles of bark were far from interesting ; but 
to any one who thought over the matter, it must have 
been apparent that among those apparently uninterest- 
ing bundles were almost certainly some, perhaps many 
that, were their virtues known, might, as quinine and 
many other similar drugs have done, alleviate human 
suffering to a degree with which the imagination almost 
fails to grapple. But at present, these barks after being 
exhibited are thrown unexamined away ; for they exist 
in such vast quantities in the forest that the owners take 
no trouble to reclaim them. It would be easy to have 
