16 
^ [ Rep. IS^o. 564. ] 
We are personally acquainted with our enterprising fellow-Jerseymanj 
Dr. Perrine, and we heartily wish that he may be ultimately recompensed 
for the time, labor, and money, which he has sacrificed, and is still devoting 
to the introduction of useful plants into the United States. We understand 
that he believes the Cochineal plant and insect may be successfully reared 
in East Florida, inasmuch as the experiment has succeeded in Spain; and 
that he is possessed of all the details relative to the management of both. 
The stingless bees of Yucatan, introduced by him, (of which he has de¬ 
posited a hive in Peale’s museum at Ne w York,) will be an invaluable 
acquisition to our Southern and Southwestern States,and may be gradually 
propagated throughout the Union. It is to be lamented that Government 
does not possess the power to appropriate funds to aid its agents in the 
duties of this class, imposed upon them by the Treasury circular. It is 
still more lamentable that our consulates, especially in Spanish America, 
are not salaried, and filled with scientific men, whose pursuits would be 
useful to their country; and that they are too generally obtained as a 
mere speculation, to aid the mercantile business of the possessor, to the 
injury of his countrymen in the same trade, and to the degradation of 
his office in the eyes of foreigners.— Neiu Brunswick Times. 
No. 7. 
THE AGAVE SISALANA, OR SISAL HEMP. 
In our paper of the 4th January we called the attention of readers to an 
extract of a letter on the plants of Mexico, from Dr. H. Perrine, the Amer¬ 
ican consul for Campeachy, to the Secretary of the Treasury, which’was 
published in the Washington Globe of the 19th November last. We now 
particularly invite their attention to another extract of a letter on a single 
cultivated plant of Yucatan, from the same gentleman to Dr. Howell, of 
Princeton, New Jersey, which was published in the Telegraph of the 17th 
ultimo, and which will be found in the first page of this paper. The im¬ 
portance attached by the Lyceum of Natural History of New York to the 
subject of this article, is manifested by that society in a unanimous resolu¬ 
tion recommending it to national patronage. By the Tallahassee Flori¬ 
dian of the 3d ultimo, we perceive that the Governor of that Territory, 
in his message to the Legislative Council, warmly applauds the important 
enterprise suggested in the letter of Dr. Perrine to the Treasury Depart¬ 
ment, of domesticating tropical.plants in the southern extremity of Florida 
by means of an incorporated company; and hopes that the National Gov¬ 
ernment will aid him by a gmnt of land, or otherwise, to accomplish this 
laudable object of his ambition. In the same paper, of the 17th ultimo 
,we observe the passage of an act with the title of the “Tropical Plant ^ 
Company of Florida,’’ which is said to be composed of the most distin¬ 
guished residents of that peninsula. And we hope to see an announce¬ 
ment in the Washington papers that the General Government has given, 
its testimony to thelmportance of this great enterprise, and of the services ' 
of Dr. Perrine, by an act of Congress granting him an ample tract of land 
in the unsettled tropical extremity of East Florida, to encourage the intro¬ 
duction and promote the culture of tropical plants. Such a tract of land 
