are taken before the birds have laid their eggs. The coarsest are those obtained after the young are fledged ; the test of excellence is the whiteness of the article. They are taken twice a year, and if regularly collected, and no unusual injury be offered to the caverns, the crop of nests will not suffer any diminution from year to year; nor will the quantity increase by the caverns being left unmolested for a year or two. Some of the caves are extremely difficult of access, and the nests can only be collected by persons accustomed from their youth to the business. The most remarkable and productive caves in the island of Java, are those of Karang Bolang, in the province of Boglen, on the south coast of the island. Here the caves can only be approached by a perpendicular descent of many hundred feet with ladders of bamboo and ratan, over a sea rolling violently against the rocks. When the mouth of the cavern is reached, the perilous office of taking the nests must often be performed by torchlight, penetrating into recesses of the rock, where the slightest trip would be instantly fatal to the adventurers, who see nothing below them but the furious surf washing its way into the chasms of the rock.

These nests are most extravagantly esteemed by the Chinese as an article of luxury. The best kinds are sold for thirty dollars a pound. On account of their high price, they are of course consumed only by the rich, and indeed the best part is sent to Pekin for the use of the court. They are used principally in soups, and are believed by the Chinese to be highly stimulating and tonic; but it is thought by others that their most valuable quality consists in their being perfectly harm

less. The people of Japan, who so much resemble the Chinese in many of their habits, have no taste for this luxury; and how the latter acquired their predilection for this foreign commodity, is no less difficult to account for than the fact of their persevering in the use of it. Among the western nations, there is no parallel to this gastronomic whim, unless it be the extravagant estimation in which the Romans held some articles of luxury, remarkable for nothing but their scarcity and high price.

The only preparation which the bird's-nests undergo is that of simple drying without direct exposure to the sun; after which they are assorted into three kinds for the Chinese market, and packed in boxes. A year's produce is estimated at nearly a million and a half of dollars. This income rests, as we have seen, upon the capricious wants of a single people. The places producing the nests are claimed as the exclusive property of the sovereign of the island or territory, where thy are found, and always form a valuable branch of his resources, or of the revenue of the state. This value however is not equal in all cases, and depends upon the situation and the circumstances connected with the caverns in which the nests are found. Being often in remote and sequestered spots in a country so lawless, a property so valuable and exposed, is subject to the depredations of freebooters, and it not unfrequently happens that an attack upon it is a principal object of the warfare committed by one petty state against another. In such situations the expense of affording protection is so heavy, that the estates are necessarily of little

value. In situations where the caverns are difficult of access to strangers, and where there prevails enough of order and tranquillity to secure them from internal depredation, and to admit of the nests being obtained with no other expense, than the simple labor of collecting them, the value of the property is very great. The caverns of Karang Bolang, in Java, are of this description. These afford annually 6,810 pounds of nests, which are worth, at the Batavia prices, nearly 139,000 dollars, and the whole expense of collecting, curing and packing, is no more than 11 per cent on this amount. The price of the nests is of course a monopoly price, the quantity produced being limited by nature and incapable of augmentation. There is perhaps no article upon which human industry is exerted, of which the cost of production bears so small a proportion to the market price.

THE advantage of an interchange of commodities, one person supplying what was needed by another, must have been obvious in the earliest stages of society. Such interchange must have been, however, on a very insignificant scale among tribes living in a state of hunters, and seeking their subsistence, not from domesticated animals, but from the precarious spoils of the forest. Such appears from Scripture to have been the state of the central part of Asia, in the

ages following the flood. It was the condition, also, of the aboriginal Greeks, before Cadmus and other foreigners, arriving from the east, brought among them a knowledge of the useful arts; and it was the state of the greater part of England, on the first invasion of the Romans. Such, at the present day, is the condition of the Indians of North America, who roam over the vast tracts west and north-west of the Mississippi, obtaining by the chase, quantities of furs to exchange with English and American traders, but in other respects, living in great penury, and having few commodities to barter with each other.

In the next stage in the progress of society, the pastoral state accompanied with a little tillage, the interchange of commodities is still on a very limited scale. This is succeeded by the agricultural state, in which individuals and families collect in hamlets, villages, and finally in towns. Employment then becomes divided; people follow separate trades, and the products or workmanship of one are exchanged for those of another. Intercourse then assumes such a shape and magnitude, as to be entitled to the name of commerce. If it be asked in what parts of the world was the exchange of commodities first carried on to any considerable extent, we answer, in Mesopotamia, Egypt, and the more fertile provinces of the north of Arabia. For this, we have the direct authority of Scripture, as well as the indirect but powerful evidence afforded by the local advantages of certain tracts of country, such as those adjacent to the Euphrates and the Nile. In warm climates, the great desideratum in cultivation is a supply of water; and population first