peculiar perfume is owing to benzoic acid, and
one smart farmer, having discovered this, forthwith,
twice a day, gave his cows from twenty to
thirty grains of benzoin, dissolved in hot water,
then stirred into their corn or meal.  He got the
same kind of butter as the Philadelphian May
butter, which all Americans go wild about.
Grow China grass, for cloth; grow jute hemp
from the two plants chonch and isbund, and
make quantities of gunny and gunny-bags, also
carpets that will sell at a profit at eightpence
the yard, and shrivel up into rags if they get
wet.  This last is a quality about which the
manufacturer has no cause to trouble himself.
Sow Chinese rice, which will grow well in
moderately warm climates, and give good harvests at
a trifling cost; and where you can—say, in the
southern states, or our own warm colonies—
plant oranges and lemons, bamboos, cocoa plants,
camphor-trees, and tea-shrubs; and especially
cultivate the mati, or Paraguay tea, which
adulterates the real souchong wholesomely and
cunningly.  We want more drugs; so say the
allopathists.  Why not, then, cultivate the
liquorice-root, the opium poppy, the rhatany plant,
and quassia, which is such a handsome shrub;
vanilla, at present a costly luxury denied
to modest incomes; ginger, castor-oil (palma
Christi), and cardamom? says Mr. Freedley.
Go to the southern states and try them all; a
million sterling will reward the perfect
acclimatisation of any one of these products.

Cultivate oleaginous plants, and express the oil.
This is Chance One hundred and four. Colza oil
is got from a species of cabbage allied to the
rape: plant, then, acres of colza cabbages; plant
ground nuts; the bene plant, said to exceed all
others in the amount of oleaginous matter which
it contains; great Macaw trees, that yield an
oil largely used in toilet soaps, and held as a
sovereign remedy against "bone ache";
horseradish trees, giving perfumers and watchmakers
that famous oil of Ben, which can hardly ever be
obtained pure, and which is so costly even when
adulterated; arzo trees, which furnish almond
oil worth twenty-five cents. a pound; and, lastly,
cotton-seed oil, with which you may fatten milch
cows far better than with linseed.  The root
of the soap weed would save much trouble
and expense.  There you have your household
soap made to your hand; and, of the leaves, you
may make plaited hats, ropes, and sacks.  The
seeds of the Sapindus saponaria will cleanse
more linen than thirty times their weight of
soap would have done: never mind if they
corrode the linen after a time, that is not your
business.  The fruit is a soap as well, and
perhaps more innocent than the leaves; at all
events, try both upon the public.  In Chili there
is a soap-tree called Quillaya saponaria, which
cleanses silks, velvets, and woollen, better than
any French chalk in the world.  In Brazil, a
soap is made from the ashes of the bassura, or
brown plant (Sidu lanceolata), and the leaves of
the American aloe form a soup "as detergent as
Castille soap for washing linens, and with the
remarkable quality of mixing with salt water as
well as with fresh." The tallow-tree of China
is another very remarkable production.  Its fruit
contains a substance that may be regarded as
pure vegetable stearine: in addition to this, the
kernel of the nut gives about thirty per cent. of
valuable oil, and, moreover, changes grey hair
into black; the husks and shells feed furnace
fires, and the cakes which remain after the tallow
has been expressed are invaluable as manure.

Go to the proper climate, and cultivate
cocoa palms.  Thirty thousand trees, once
established, assure competence for a generation
and a half; but the tree is long before it
bears, and the cocoa planter must have patience
as well as capital.  Coffee is not half plentiful
enough.  The world has got over its first horror
both of tobacco and this strange beverage, which
caused an old preacher to say that "men cannot
wait till the smoke of the infernal regions
surrounds them, but encompass themselves with
smoke of their own accord, and drink a poison
which God made black that it might bear the
devil's colour."  Instead of hurling thunderbolts
like these, even preachers now smoke
tobacco and drink coffee, and the lay world follows
their example.  But there is not half enough
coffee grown, and one-third more of tobacco
would not be too much; wherefore Mr. Freedley
says to the idle speculator, Grow coffee and
tobacco, and make cent. per cent. for your
pains.  Work out the capabilities of aluminum,
and find an efficient substitute for black-lead;
but, above all—Chance Seven hundred or so—
"discover and manufacture artificial substitutes
for such natural objects as are rare and costly."
But this deserves a separate paragraph to
itself.

Hitherto we have dealt with speculations more
or less dependent upon climate;. now, we have
to treat of matters that are independent of
weather, sun, and the longitude.  First on the
list come artificial gems. Any one may make
these, who has dexterous fingers and understands
proportions.  If you want emeralds and rubies,
make a mixture of alumina and magnesia, and
add from half to one per cent. of bichromate of
potass; to this mixture add one part fused
boracic acid, and "expose it in platinum resting
in porcelain, to the heat of the porcelain furnace
of Sèvres."  The product will be rubies.  The
constituents of emerald, treated in the same
ways, yield emeralds.  Sapphires are born of
lamp-black, calcined alum, and sulphate of
potash reduced to powder.  Pearls are the
thinnest possible glass bulbs lined with essence
of pearl, or the brilliant scales of the bleak, a
small river fish, thrown into liquid ammonia.
The glass bulbs must be of a slightly bluish tint,
opalised and extremely thin, and contain but
little oxide of lead.  The workmen who make
them, make nothing else, and only succeed after
many years of trial and practice.  Gold is easy
to imitate.  A Washington chemist makes iron
to look like gold by washing it with a mixture
of linseed oil three ounces, tartar two ounces,
yolk of egg boiled hard and beaten two ounces,
aloes half an ounce, saffron five grains, turmeric