Commercial Dictionaries, and Parliamentary and Consular Reports; but
is the fruit of my own Colonial experience as a practical planter and
of much laborious research and studious investigation into a class of
ephemeral but useful publications, which seldom meet with any extended
or enduring circulation--assisted, moreover, by the contributions and
suggestions of many of the most eminent agricultural chemists,
planters, and merchants of our Colonial Possessions and Foreign
Countries.

Few are aware of the great labor and research required for digesting
and arranging conflicting accounts--for consulting the numerous
detached papers and foreign works treating of the subjects embraced in
this volume, and for referring to the home and colonial trade
circulars, Legislative papers, and scientific periodicals of different
countries. The harassing duties appertaining to the position of City
editor of a daily paper, coupled with numerous other literary
engagements, have afforded me insufficient time to do full justice to
the work while passing through the press; and several literal
typographical errors in the botanical names have, I find, escaped my
attention in the revision of the sheets. I have, however, thought it
scarcely necessary to make a list of errata for these. From want of
leisure, to reduce all the weights and measures named in the body of
the work into English, I have given their relative value in the Index.
I have taken considerable pains to make the Index most full and
complete, for it has always appeared to me, that in works embracing a
great variety of subjects, facility of reference is of paramount
importance.

Some discrepancy may here and there be found between the figures
quoted from Parliamentary returns and those derived from private trade