on vegetable culture, which might be brought into this category, such as silk and cochineal.  Very few of these products of the vegetable kingdom come to us in any other than an unmanufactured state; they are shipped to this country as the chief emporium and factory of the world, either for re-export or to be prepared for consumption by the millions to whom they furnish employment, sustenance, and articles of clothing.

It is a wise ordination of Providence, that the different nations of the earth are as it were mutually dependent on each other for many of the necessaries and luxuries of life, and the means of progress and civilization.  Commerce is thus extended, the various arts and manufactures improved by comparison and competition; and the acres yet untilled in distant lands hold out strong inducements for immigration, their climate and products affording health, freedom, and independence to the over-tasked and heavily taxed artisan and agriculturist of Europe.  Although the systems of tropical agriculture, generally pursued, are peculiar and effective, yet there is no doubt that much improvement remains to be carried out in the practices adopted, in the implements employed, and the machinery used for preparing the crops for shipment.  In the British Isles our insulated position, limited extent of country, unsettled climate, and numerous population, aggregated in dense masses, have compelled us to investigate and avail ourselves of every improvement in agriculture, arts and manufactures, which experience, ingenuity, and a comparison with the customs of other countries, have placed at our disposal.

If we except sandy deserts, and some of the interior portions of the polar regions, it will be found that there is scarcely any country but what is capable of improvement.  Indeed, so extensive are the resources of agriculture, that further improvements may be most easily effected.

Let us then examine and ascertain what new objects may be improved upon, and if by our speculations only one single article, either for food or use, is added to those already in use, or those that are already cultivated be improved upon, it is equivalent to an increase of our wealth.

An eminent writer has truly remarked that “Agriculture is the parent of Manufactures, seeing that the productions of nature are the materials of art.”

In the economy of Providence every fragment of creation seems to unfold, as man progresses in the arts of life, unbounded capabilities of adaptation to his every want.  We have, indeed, daily illustration of the truth of that trite and homely adage, that “nothing is made in vain.”

That quaint old English poet, Herbert, who flourished in the fifteenth century, in a short poem on “Providence,” has graphically described, in his unique vein, the sentiment which forces itself upon us in view of the numerous discoveries of the age in which we live:—­

“All countries have enough to serve their need.