The population of the United States in 1840 was, in round numbers, seventeen millions; the average consumption of coffee for the three years ending 1841, 981/2 millions of pounds, which gave a consumption of 53/4 lbs. per head.  The average for the three years ending 1850, was 143 millions of pounds, and the population was twenty-three millions, which gave a consumption of 61/4 lbs. per head.  In 1830 the consumption was only 3 lbs. per head; but the price ruled nearly double what it was in the three years preceding 1850.

In 1821 the consumption per head, to the inhabitants of the United States, was 1 lb. 4 oz.  In 1830, the proportion had increased to 3 lbs. per head, the foreign price having fallen fifty per cent.  The importation in the year 1831 doubled, in consequence of the reduced duty; and the consumption per head for the four years ending with 1842, averaged 6 lb. per head, having quadrupled to each inhabitant since 1821.  From 1820 to 1840, the Brazilian product increased 1,100 per cent, or 155 million pounds.  In the same time the consumption in the United States increased 137 million pounds; leaving an increase of eighteen million pounds of Rio coffee, besides the enhanced products of all countries, to supply the increased consumption of England and Europe.

The consequence of the duty in England is, that while the United States, with a population of seventeen millions, consumed, in 1844, 149,711,820 lbs. of coffee, Great Britain, with a population of twenty-seven millions, consumed 31,934,000 lbs. only, or less than one-fourth the consumption of the United States.  In 1851 the figures remained nearly the same, viz., 148,920,000 lbs. in the United States, and 32,564,000 lbs. for Great Britain.

The cultivation of coffee forms the present riches of Costa Rica, and has raised it to a state of prosperity unknown in any other part of Central America.  It was begun about fifteen years ago; a few plants having been brought from New Granada, and the first trial being successful, it has rapidly extended.  All the coffee is grown in the plain of San Jose, where the three principal towns are situated—­about two-thirds being produced in the environs of the capital, a fourth in those of Hindia, and the remainder at Alhajuela, and its vicinity.  The land which has been found by experience to be best suited to coffee is a black loam, and the next best, a dark-red earth—­soils of a brown and dull yellow color being quite unsuitable.  The plain of San Jose is mostly of the first class, being, like all the soils of Central America, formed with a large admixture of volcanic materials.  Contrary to the experience of Java and Arabia Felix, coffee is here found to thrive much better, and produce a more healthy and equal berry on plain land, than upon hills, or undulating slopes, which doubtless arises from the former retaining its moisture better, and generally containing a larger deposit of loam.

I am inclined, in a great measure, to attribute the practice of sowing coffee in sloping land in Java to this fact, that the plains are usually occupied by the more profitable cultivation of sugar-canes.  In Arabia, the plains are generally of a sandy nature (being lands which have, apparently, at no very distant geological period, formed the bed of the sea), which may account for the plantations existing only upon the low hills and slopes.