42 [ Rep. No. 564. ] 
products of agriculture possess the internal power of rapid reproduction 
in a wonderful geometrical progression. A single grain of tobacco, which, 
in two years, would furnish only seed enough for a single field, in two years 
more will afford a sufficient supply to plant a hundred thousand fields ! 
One cochineal insect alone, whose progeny in one year would occupy 
the leisure of only one rural laborer, in one year more will give abundant 
employment to the leisure of one million of rural laborers. In a limited 
time and space, this extraordinary multiplication is as certain in practice 
as it is astonishing in calculation ; and hence the delay or advance of a 
single year in forming a nursery of supply for cultivators must be of in¬ 
calculable importance to an agricultural community. The introduction 
of valuable vegetables to the industry of the South, is a sure and speedy 
remedy for its existing distress. Its large capital and fertile soils may 
still be devoted to the production of the short fibres of the dry pods of its 
annual Gossypiums; while its small capitals and steril districts may be 
transferred to the cultivation of the long fibres of the fresh leaves of the 
perennial Agaves ; and the resulting Henequen and Pita, as superior sub¬ 
stitutes for the hemp and flax of Northern climates, will become har¬ 
monious associates with cotton, its ancient and principal staple. With 
the fibres of one exotic vegetable, our Southern States have hitherto 
furnished a material for the clothing of a great proportion of the human 
race; and with the fibres of other exotic vegetables, they may hereafter 
supply the materials for thread, twine, and cordage, cambric and canvass, 
and diversified manufactures, to a great majority of the civilized world. 
Besides the foreign plants which are principally valuable on account 
of the quantity or quality of their fibres, there are thousands whose 
varied productions are still more profitable, in proportion to the capital 
employed, which maybe transferred from South America, Africa, and 
Asia, to our Southern shores; and, once within the range of American 
enterprise, industry, intelligence, and ingenuity will become converted 
into mines of vegetable wealth, of which their barbarous native countries 
have never even dreamed. By the cultivation of the cactus cochinilifer 
alone, the labor of merely the feeble in sex or age, at the South, may di¬ 
vert from Mexico its millions of monopoly in cochineal. 
The foregoing considerations demand the immediate establishment of a 
nursery of tropical plants at or near Cape Florida, 
The climates of the northern and southern halves of the peninsula of 
Florida are different in kind or distinct in character. Above 28 ° it pos¬ 
sesses the improved climate of our Southern States, and below that 
parallel it enjoys the improved of the West Indies. St. Augustine 
resembles Charleston and New Orleans, in-the humidity of its winter and 
the transitions of its temperature. Cape Florida resembles Matanzas 
and Campeachy, in the dryness of its winter and the uniformity of its 
temperature. The southern half of Florida has also, the perpetual trade 
wind, the daily sea and nightly land breeze, and the rainy summer of the 
islands of Cuba, Hayti, Jamaica, and Puerto Rico, and of the whole 
peninsula of Yucatan. Hence it combines all the phenomena of a trop¬ 
ical climate, viz : a constant aerial current to the west; an alternate, land 
and sea breeze; a delicious dry, and a refreshing wet season; and a 
great uniformity of temperature throughout the year. But tropical 
Florida, as it, may now be called, must be blessed with a still greater 
equality of temperature than either the islands of the West Indies or the 
