The ginger grown in the West Indies is considered superior in quality to that of the East, doubtless because more care is paid to the culture and drying of the root, but it is of less importance to commerce.  The quantities imported from these two quarters is however becoming more equal, and Africa is coming into the field as a producer, 1,545 casks and packages having arrived from the western coast in 1846.  The annual average export of ginger from Barbados between the years 1740 and 1788, was 4,667 bags; between 1784 and 1786, 6,320 bags; in 1788, 5,562 cwt. were shipped; in 1792, 3,046 bags and barrels.  In 1738, so widely was the culture of this root diffused in Jamaica, that 20,933 bags, of one cwt. each, and 8,864 lbs. in casks were shipped.  The exports may now be taken on an average at 4,000 cwt.; but, like all the other staple products of the island, this has fallen off one-half since the emancipation of the negro population.

In the three years which preceded the abolition of slavery, 5,719,000 lbs. of ginger were shipped from Jamaica.  In the three years ending with 1848, the quantity shipped had decreased 2,612,186 lbs., as will be seen by the following returns:—­

GINGER SHIPPED.
lbs.                          lbs.
1830          1,748,800   |   1846          1,462,000
1831          1,614,640   |   1847          1,324,480
1832          2,355,560   |   1848            320,340
---------   |                 ---------
5,719,000   |                 3,106,820

In 1843 there were shipped from Jamaica 3,719 casks and bags; in 1844, 3,692 casks and 1730 bags; in 1845, 3,506 casks, valued at L4 10s. each, and 1,129 bags, valued at L2 each, equal in all to L18,037.  From the island of Hayti 8,769 lbs. of ginger were exported in 1835, and 15,509 lbs. in 1836. 39 packages of ginger were shipped from Barbados in 1851.

In Maranham and one or two other provinces of Brazil, ginger of an excellent quality is grown, and a good deal is exported.  It was very early an article of culture in South America.  According to Acosta, it was brought to America by one Francisco de Mendoza, from Malabar, and so rapidly did its cultivation spread, that as far back as 1547, 22,053 cwt. were shipped to Europe.  Southey, in his “History of Brazil” (vol. i., p. 320), says, “Ginger had been brought from the island of St. Thomas, and throve so well that in the year 1573, 4,000 arrobas of 25 lbs. each were cured; it was better than what came from India, though the art of drying it was not so well understood.  Great use was made of this root in preserves, but it was prohibited, as interfering with the Indian trade in that wretched species of policy which regards immediate revenue as its main object.”

Ginger was worth in the London market 25s. to 60s. the cwt. in bond; middling and fine qualities, 80s. to 160s.  The duty is 5s. per cwt.

Amount of imports of ginger into the United Kingdom, with the quantities entered for home consumption:—­