there must be insuperable obstacles to
the right preparation of Indian flax, know
very little of the natural apathy of the native
character or of the sluggishness of the
European frame in those regions. But once let an
urgent necessity spring up tor Indian flax, and
means will quickly be found for supplying
any amount of demand.

The flax fibre of British India may be
wanting in fineness, but it will, in any event,
prove a valuable material for the heavy goods
manufactured at Dundee; whilst the delicate
fabrics of Leeds and Belfast may still be
produced from fibres freely abounding in Assam,
Cachar, and the Tenasserim Provinces of
India. These closely approximate to, if they
be not identical with the well-known China-
grass from which the most beautiful lawns
are manufactured. The plant is the Urtica
Tenacissima, known in Northern India by the
name of Rheea, and in the Tenasserim
country as Pan: in both localities, and
doubtless in many others, it is to be found
growing wild, and in the greatest profusion.

Besides linen manufacturers, paper makers
and paper consumers must necessarily suffer
from any diminution in the supply of textile
fabrics. For some time past the price of
paper has been rising in consequence of the
scarcity of fibrous materials; and, looking to
the present enormous consumption, not only
for literature, but for trade purposes, we shall
be quite safe in estimating the future
additional cost of paper for one year, at two
millions sterling.

It will be a great advantage to save some
of this extra charge now that we are incurring
other heavy expenses; and, although the
coarser East Indian flax and similar fibres may
be pronounced indifferent articles for spinning,
they cannot fail to prove of immense importance
for paper. British India already
produces materials sufficient to feed all the
paper mills in the world.

India can also furnish many good substitutes
for hemp at small cost. There is scarcely
a district of the East India Company's
territories, where wild plants are not to be
abundantly met with yielding fibres, little if
at all inferior to those of Russia. Time-
honoured prejudices have hitherto kept out
of our market the few that have been tried;
but, under the pressure of war prices,
experiments may be successfully made that
otherwise would have been hopeless.

We now pass to tea. The present season's
tea crop is safe, but who can tell how the
wide-spreading revolution in China may
affect the gathering and shipments of the
coming year? Yet it may greatly calm the
apprehensions of tea-drinkers to know that,
for this exotic, we possess a good and pleasant
substitute, growing freely within our own
colonies. In some of the West India Islands.
and in the East Indies, especially in Ceylon,
the coffee plant is extensively cultivated. The
shipments of coffee, from Ceylon alone, now
amount to half a million hundred-weights
yearly. It is generally known that the
leaves of the coffee plant possess properties
and qualities very nearly akin to those of the
ordinary tea of commerce; and that, when
dried and infused, a beverage is produced in
every way as agreeable and as restorative as
that made from Souchong or Hyson. In the
Brazils, and in some of the islands of the
eastern seas, the infusion of coffee leaves has
become an ordinary drink; so much so that the
labouring population prefer it to any other.
A writer in the Pharmaceutical Journal,
alluding to Sumatra, says, "With a little boiled
rice and infusion of the coffee leaf, a man will
support the labours of the field in rice-planting
for days and weeks successively, up to
the knees in mud, under a burning sun or
drenching rain, which he could not do by the
use of simple water, or by the aid of spirituous
or fermented liquors." We are not inclined
to abide by this evidence to the utmost
extent, knowing that the natives of warm
climates can live on far less substantial food
than the labourers in northern latitudes; and
by no means holding that what is sauce for
the Hindoo goose is equally sauce for the
British gander. But we add this
personal testimony from the same writer: "I was
induced several years ago, from an occasional
use of the coffee leaf, to adopt it as a daily
beverage, and my constant practice has been
to take two cups of a strong infusion, with
milk, in the evening, as a restorative after
the business of the day. I find from it
immediate relief from hunger and fatigue.
The bodily strength is increased, and the
mind left for the evening clear and in full
possession of its faculties."

It appears that this leaf may be
prepared for the European market for about
twopence per pound. Its chemical constituents
are said, to be theine, a volatile oil, an
astringent acid, gluten and gum; ail of which
approximate very closely to the elementary
principles of the tea-leaf.

It is not necessary either to cultivate
the coffee plant purposely for the leaf, or to
rob it of any of the leaves necessary to its
proper development; although, from our own
knowledge of tropical agriculture we have
little doubt that, in many places, the plant
might be economically grown to yield
leaves only at a very low rate, and, in places
where the berry could not be produced.
But there is no need of this. After each
coffee crop, the planters prune their estates,
more or less heavily; the branches and
leaves being left to rot on the ground. At a
low calculation, two ounces of the dried leaves
might be used from the cuttings of each
coffee plant, which is usually five or six feet
high. In the island of Ceylon alone, there
are plantations extending over eighty thousand
acres, and numbering eighty millions of
plants. As each plant could yield two ounces
of choice leaves, there would be an annual