the
article is ready for shipping to the manufacturing towns, of which
Manchester is the most important. In India and Arabia the cotton bush
has been cultivated for more than 2000 years, and Alexander the Great
introduced it into Greece. Now there are plantations all over the world,
but nowhere has the cultivation reached such perfection as in the United
States of America.

Crops which during recent decades have shown enormous development are
those known as india-rubber and gutta-percha, so much being demanded by
the bicycle and motor industries. In the year 1830, 230 tons of rubber
were imported into Europe; in 1896, 315,500 tons. The demand became so
great that a reckless and barbarous exploitation took place of the
trees, the inspissated and dried sap of which is rubber, this tough
resisting and elastic gum which renders such valuable services to man.
In Borneo ten trees were felled for every kilogramme of gutta-percha.
Now more prudent and sensible methods have been introduced. In Ceylon,
Java, and the Malay Peninsula there are large plantations which make
their owners rich men. In India the Brazilian tree (_Hevea_) is the most
productive of all the rubber-yielding varieties. A cross cut is made in
the trunk of the tree, and the milky juice runs out and is collected
into receptacles. Then it is boiled, stirred, compressed, and spread on
tinned plates, rolled up and sent in balls into the market. At present
Brazil supplies two-thirds of all the rubber used.

Then we have all the various spices--cinnamon, which is the bark on the
twigs of the cinnamon-tree; pepper, carried into Europe by Alexander;
ginger, and cardamoms. There is sesamum, from the seeds of which a fine
edible oil is pressed out, and then tea, coffee, and tobacco. A plant
which is at once a blessing and a curse, and which is extensively
cultivated in India, is the poppy. When the outer skin of the fruit
capsule is slit with a knife, a milky juice oozes out which turns brown
and coagulates in the air, and is called opium. The opium which Europe
requires for medicinal purposes comes from Macedonia and Asia Minor. But
the opium grown in Persia and India goes mostly to China, into which
country it was introduced by the Tatars at the end of the seventeenth
century. The Chinese smoke opium in specially-made pipes. A small pea of
opium is pressed into the bowl of the pipe and held over the flame of a
lamp. The smoke is inhaled in a couple of deep breaths. A