“WHAT IS IT, AND WHERE DOES IT COME FROM”

Western Star, Issue 950, 23 May 1885, Page 1 (Supplement)

“WHAT IS IT, AND WHERE DOES IT COME FROM”

It is an interesting study to take any day a list of market quotations, and and ask oneself about every material quoted what it is and what they do with it. t'or example can you honestly pretend that you really understand the use and importance of that valuable object of everyday demand, fustic P I remember an ill-used telegraph clerk in a tropical colony once complaining to me that English operators were so disgracefully ignorant about this important staple as invariably to substitute for it’s name the word “ justice” in all telegrams which originally referred to it. Have you any clear and definite notions as to the prime origin and final destination of a thing called jute, on whose sole manufacture the whole great and flourishing town of Dundee lives and moves and has its being? What is turmeric ? Whence do we obtain vanilla? How many commercial products are yielded by the or* chids? How many distinct plants in different countries afford the totally distinct starches lumped together in grocers’ lists under the absurd name of arrowroot P When you ask for sago do you really see that you get it P and how many entirely different objects described as sago a re known to commerce? Define the uses of partridge canes and croton oil. What objects are generally manufactured from tucum ? Would it surprise yon to learn that English doorhandles are generally made out of coquilla nuts ? that your wife’s buttons are turned from the indurated fruit of the Tagua palm ? and that the knobs of umbrellas grew originally in the remote depths of Guatemalan forests P Are you aware that a plant called manioc supplies the starchy food of. one half the population of tropical America ]~~(}ornhill 4 lagmns,