In a petition presented by the spice planters of Pinang and Province Wellesley, to the authorities at home, in 1844, praying that the duty on British Colonial nutmegs, mace, and cloves might be reduced to 1s. 9d., 1s. 3d., and 3d. respectively, on importation into England, in order to compete with foreign produce, it was stated that a few years hence Prince of Wales Island might be expected to produce 600,000 lbs. of nutmegs, 200,000 lbs. of mace, and 300,000 lbs. of cloves; whilst Singapore, if equally successful in the culture of the same, would yield yearly 137,000 lbs. of nutmegs, 45,000 lbs. of mace, and 60,000 lbs. of cloves.  In short, the planters needed only encouragement to produce in the course of a few years a full supply of those valuable spices for the whole consumption of Great Britain.

Dr. Ruschenberger, who visited Zanzibar in 1835, thus speaks of the clove plantations there:—­“As far as the eye could reach over a beautifully undulated land, nothing was to be seen but clove trees of different ages, varying in height from five to twenty feet.  The form of the tree is conical, the branches grow at nearly right angles with the trunk, and they begin to shoot a few inches above the ground.  The plantation contains nearly four thousand trees, and each tree yields on an average six pounds of cloves a year; they are carefully picked by hand, and then dried in the shade; we saw numbers of slaves standing on ladders gathering the spice, while others were at work clearing the ground of dead leaves.  The whole is in the finest order, presenting a picture of industry and of admirable neatness and beauty.  They were introduced into Zanzibar in 1818, from Mauritius, and are found to thrive so well that almost everybody in the island is now clearing away the cocoa nut to make way for them.  The clove bears in five or six years from the seed; of course time enough has not yet elapsed for the value and quantity of Zanzibar cloves to be generally known; they are worth, however, in the Bombay market, about 30s. the Surat maund of 391/4 lbs.; the price for Molucca cloves in the Eastern market is from 28 to 30 dollars per picul of 133 lbs.; for those of Mauritius, 20 to 24 dollars per picul.”

The average annual consumption of cloves in the United Kingdom, in the four years ending 1841, was 49,000 lbs.  The largest quantity of cloves imported during the past twenty-five years was 1,041,171 lbs., in 1847.  The quantities imported and entered for home consumption in the last five years have been as follows:—­

Imports.        Home consumption.
lbs.               lbs.
1848           117,433             126,691
1849           274,713             133,713
1850           749,646             159,934
1851           253,439             138,132
1852           313,949             175,287

In 1848 we received 60,000 lbs. of cloves from British India.

THE NUTMEG.