CEYLON. This fine island is particularly rich in natural produce ; and preparations are being made to exhibit a most extensive collec tion of such produce at Hyde Park in the present year. Among the vegetable produce are cotton, tamarinds, gamboge, coin, cocoa nuts, coffee, rice, nutmegs, ginger, mandioca, arrow-root, a great variety of vegetable fibres fitted for cordage, and a fair variety of timber wood. Of animal products there are being collected ivory, buffalo and deer horns, honey, wax, hides, hoofs, and musk. Among dye materials are madder, jack-wood, sapan-wood, and turmeric. The seashores will yield pearls, mosses, sponge, cowries, and salt, minerals, medicinal substances, gums, and resins—are all in rich variety.
Mr. Capper, secretary to a committee foe managing the transmission of specimens to England,in a letter to Lord Toning ton,remarks : " Without placing the Cingalese carvers and workers in the fine metals, on an exact par with other nations famed for such works, they may yet be fairly entitled to an honourable place. The specimens now preparing of car vings in ebony, calamander, ivory, shells, &c.
will, it is believed, earn a reputation for the island workmen, which has not yet been accorded them in England. The committee is doing all in its power to procure the best spe cimens of silver ornaments." An important arrangement for Ceylon is that which makes it a central point for the Oriental Mail Packets. A mail which leaves Southampton every month, via Alexandria and the Red Sea, stops at Ceylon whence two branch mails issue, one to Madras and Calcutta, the other to Penang, Singapore, and Hong Kong ; and it is probable that another branch mail to Australia, Van Diemen's Land, and New Zealar.(1, will be made part of this monthly system— all conducted by steam navigation.
A good deal of weaving is carried on at Ceylon. The pressure of oil from numerous varieties of seed is also largely conducted. Ceylon takes British goods to the value of about a million sterling annually, and sells in return large quantities of cinnamon, coffee, and cocoa-nut oil.