gion extends on the Pacific coast, from Mexico, through California, Oregon, and Washington Territories, to the frozen regions of the North. Probably not onefourth of the gold fields of North America are explored sufficiently to warrant any conclusion as to their value. It is safe to say, however, from facts already known, that the gold mines on this coast are ample in extent, to give profitable employment to a million men for a very long period. Few who have traveled through the mines of California, are willing to admit that the gold deposits can be exhausted in centuries. There are single mountains, like Table Mountain in Tuolumne County, that will require more labor, before exhausted of their riches, than would be needed to build the Pacific Railroad.

MANUFACTURE OF SILK IN CHINA.

The silks manufactured by the Chinese are especially remarkable for their bright colors; and, with the exception of their velvets, are fully equal, if not superior, to those of European manufacture. Everybody who is able wears silk, not only his clothes and stockings, but his boots and shoes also being made of that article. The finest silk is made in Tsche-Kiang and Kiand-Su, 27° and 32° north. In Canton there are 17,000 silk weavers. The other principal manufactories are in Nankin, Hancheu, and Tu-tscheu. The looms differ but slightly from those used in Europe before the time of Jacquard. The work is done entirely by hand, and the workmen are paid at the rate of six to ten dollars monthly, their daily labor continuing from fourteen to sixteen hours. The combs are made of reeds, the shears and pinchers of iron, and the polisher of the same metal. A knife is used to cut off the threads from the velvets. They have also double looms, by which two pieces of equal length may be manufactured simultaneously. They weave foulard, gauze, and taffeta, and their green cloths are especially excellent on account of their stability of color. They also make handkerchiefs, although they formerly used paper for the purpose to which they are applied. Their Gros de Naples is very much superior to that manufactured in France. The warp is formed of twisted silk, the woof of mi grenade. Another kind of Gros de Naples bears more resemblance to that of European manufacture. They also manufacture serge and blue velvet. All silk fabrics are stamped with the manufacturer's name, in Chinese characters. The crape is prepared as in France. The gauzes are distinguishable from the French by their superior lightness and neatness. The Chinese are also very dexterous in knitting. The knitting-needles of Ningpo are well known, and do not cost more than ours, although they are made one at a time, with the hand. The handsomest specimens of knitting are executed by men, the ordinary by women, and the prices of their wares are wonderfully low. In printing the silk fabrics in Ningpo, the color is laid with a brush upon a form, and cloth being spread out upon it, is beaten with a wooden block. This operation is best performed in Tung-Yung and in TscheKiang. The various colors employed by the Japanese show them to have made greater progress in chemistry than the Chinese. In Tu-tscheu the simple foulard handkerchiefs are made which are sent to India and this country. They are stamped in Canton, where also there are prepared knitted shawls for the South American market, where they are used alike by men and women. A beautiful scarlet shawl of this kind, manufactured for a Peruvian General once cost $200. A knitted fire-screen, made of velvet, on which were portrayed a Chinese woman with a child, a dog, a rose, and an almond tree, and several animals, cost $50. The most beautiful of all their fabrics of this kind are their paintings on velvet, the figures of which stand out in relief. Entire scenes are delineated in this manner. The silken sun-shades are sent to South America particularly. On their ribbons are pictured fantastic flowers, trees, birds. and insects. of the most outlandish forms and brighest colors. There is as great a demand there for these articles as among us. The most important manufactories are in Nankin, Tutscheu, and Hang-tscheu, and their cost is extremely low.

STATISTICS OF AGRICULTURE, &c.

FRUIT TRADE OF FRANCE.

Paris is the very best market for the sale, in almost unlimited quantities, of everything eatable in the shape of fruit. Many species which, from their delicate nature, seem unfitted for distant transportation, yet find their way thither from great distances, and are freely offered to the consumers of the capital. They come, too, as fresh as when first gathered, owing to their peculiar mode of package in baskets. in which they may remain forty-eight hours, and withstand all sorts of shaking and jolting, without suffering any change.

The art of packing chemes and gooseberries in baskets is termed, in the rustic language of the market gardener, ring-bagging-baguer. The wives and daughters of cultivators in the neighborhood of Paris possess this talent in remarkable perfection. Their mode of proceeding is in this wise-the fruit being first gathered in the most delicate way possible, is deposited in large, round, flat baskets, borne upon the head. As they are brought in, the women pack the fruit in other baskets of the capacity of four or five kilogrammes. The shape of these baskets is perfectly suited to their destination. They are made of brown willow, covered with its bark. They are very loosely put together, so that at short distances around the tops may be inserted small branches of chestnut with their foliage upon them, while the bottom of every basket has a thick bed of the same kind of leaves. These precautions taken, the baskets are filled and heaped up to the top of the handle. The ends of the branches are then folded over the fruit, passing them above the basket handle in intertwining their extremities. The whole is then tied together by a few turns of large pack thread, and the packing is complete. A basket of cherries or gooseberries well bound together in this way can travel without any extraordinary precautions and without danger to the fruit, not only in boat and railway car, but even on a diligence or donkey cart, on the roughest roads.

The process just described is hardly practiced or known beyond the departments bordering on the Seine, or such as send fruits to Paris. By means of the complete network of railroads which now environ the capital, the departments of the south and center are put in the way of participating in the advantages of this rapid means of communication. Extensive orchards now newly planted will soon yield immense additional quantities of all sorts of fruits for Parisian consumption. Among these fruits, cherries, blackhearts, bigarreaus, could safely reach their destination only by being carefully packed in the manner described. The cherries of the departments of the south are sold in Paris at fabulous prices prior to the time when the environs of Paris can furnish any addition to the supply. This may be inferred from the following figures. A kilogramme of cherries is sold, delivered in Paris, for two francs, in the latter part of May. The retailers buy these first cherries to decorate rods ornamented with the braided leaves of the lily of the valley-every rod has six cherries weighing at least 3 gr. With a kilogramme of cherries, then, they can make fifty batons or rods of cherries, each selling for ten centimes. So from a kilogramme of cherries, the retailer clears full five francs from the sale of his cherry rods, from which is only to be made the very trifling deduction of the cost of the rods and leaves.

After the red fruit the kind most difficult to pack well is the grape. In all the communes which send to Paris the excellent Chasselas grape, sold under the name of the Chasselas de Fontainebleau, of which Thomery is the center, numerous companies of women and children are accustomed to seek in the forests of Fontainebleau, Ferrieres, Sercette, and Orleans, the fern leaves necessary for grape packing. They are dried with great care after removing their stalks and the coarser parts, and are then kept ready for use. The clusters are placed in their leafy bed in sheets of unsized paper, and then covered with a thick layer of leaves, kept in place by sprigs of fresh willow. The peculiar elasticity of the dry fern leaves thus keeps the grapes from every bruise.

The changeful climate of Paris does not allow regular crops of apricots to be counted upon in the gardens and orchards of that capital. There are frequently intervals of five years between full crops. Paris, therefore, obtains this fruit, rare and expensive always, from the department of Puyde-dome and from l'Allier. The apricots are gathered a little before maturity, so that they may not decay during their transport; they are then packed in flat boxes, and sent by railroad. They arrive in good condition, maturing in the boxes, and are frequently kept some days before consumption.

Rouen, Havre, Fecamp, and Dieppe make to Russia, Sweden, and Norway frequent shipments of apples. Each apple is wrapped in a sheet of grey common paper. They place the fruit, thus treated, in large boxes containing a thousand each, and in order that they may not become bruised on the passage, the space between each apple is carefully filled with paper clippings, tightly pressed together. The best pippins, or Reinettes, particularly the Reinette gris or grey pippins, are the best for a long voyage, if carefully treated in this way.

The same process of packing is resorted to with the oranges of Portugal and Malta, the Baleares and Azores, where the whole harvest is destined for transportation. The orange boxes are, however, rather smaller than those used for apples, as the peculiar nature of the fruit does not permit the confinement of so great a quantity in a confined space.

The figs and dates of the East, packed in baskets and boxes, are the object of an immense trade. In the kingdom of Darfour, (Central Africa,) baskets of dates of a determined weight, supply the functions of money; a certain number of baskets representing a horse, a camel, a coat, a bag of grain, and are thus received in exchange for these articles.

COTTON CULTIVATION IN AFRICA.

Mr. Thomas Clegg, of Manchester, has published an interesting letter, describing the result of the efforts which have been made by him for the last seven or eight years to promote the cultivation of cotton in Africa, with the view of putting down the slave trade by showing the native chiefs and others" that it was their interest to employ their people, instead of making war upon each other for the sake of getting a colorable right or pretext for selling into slavery the prisoners taken in such marauding expeditions." An opening experiment at Sierra Leon failed, and he decided to go at once to interior cotton fields, and to the residence of the chiefs about Abbeokuta. Finding, however, that the European agents either died off or had returned to this country, several young Africans were selected by the Missionary Society and sent over to England, at the expense of the Native Agency Committee, to be educated and instructed in the best method of cleaning the cotton without injury to the fiber. The African Native Agency Committee of London also supplied packing presses and other machinery, and Mr. Platt supplied cotton gins, goods, and money to purchase the cotton with. Up to the 1st ultimo he had sent out 175 cotton gins, costing from £3 17s. 6d. to £10 10s. each. He has entered into correspondence with upwards of 76 native and other African traders, 21 or 22 of them being chiefs, and many of them having begun to consign their cotton and other produce to him. Three manufacturers, of Manchester, have sent out 250 cotton gins, and the natives are at present, with their present appliances, able to turn out yearly 4,368,000 pounds of clean cotton, equal to 10,000 American bales. This he regards as a rare instance of rapid development of a particular trade, and, after a view of all the known facts, he " can clearly see a prospect of the slave trade being entirely starved out." The cotton, from whatever part of Africa it comes, will invariably sell in Liverpool for 2d. or 3d. per pound more than East India

cotton. For some years it has never cost more than d. per pound in the seed; more has been offered at that price than the agents, chiefs, and dealers have been able to buy up; and it can be laid down in Liverpool at 44d. per pound, whilst it is now worth 7d., and not long ago was worth 9d. per pound. Mr. Clegg says that, believing in the goodness of the cause, he is anxious to raise £2,040 for the establishment of four new cotton stations.

CHICCORY CULTIVATION.

This plant (cichorium intybus) is called by many persons "German coffee," on account of the use to which it is so extensively applied in Germany. It is very similar to the succory often found growing wild on the slaty soils of New England, and it may be profitably cultivated for home consumption, as a great quantity of it is now sold in New York and other places, all of which is imported from Europe. It is often mixed with the ground coffee sold in stores, but the Germans buy it separate and mix it with their coffee to suit themselves. When combined with coffee it has been called an adulteration, but this is not a correct application of the term, because it really does not impart inferior or injurious qualities to the coffee, but is by many persons considered an improvement. It at least imparts a superior taste to inferior coffee, and as it is cheaper and held to be as healthy, it should be purchased separately and mixed with coffee in quantities to suit the tastes of those who use it as a beverage. The proportions of the two used together are one of chiccory to three of coffee. This plant is now cultivated very extensively in France, Germany, Holland, and England. It is sown and cultivated in rows, like the carrot, and the roots are taken up early in the autumn. Farmers who cultivate it on a large scale partially dry the roots and sell them to manufacturers, who roast, grind, and pack them up for sale. Those who cultivate little patches for their own use, store the roots in their cellars, cover them with sand, take out a few as wanted, wash, cut them in slices, roast them like coffee, and then grind them.

BEET ROOT SUGAR IN FRANCE.

The Paris Patrie, of the 6th ult., gives a summary of the state of the beet root sugar manufacture in France, as shown in official reports, for the season of 1857-1858, to the end of the month of February. It appears from it that there were 341 factories in operation, which is an increase of 58 on the previous year. There were 146 of them in the department of Nord; 54 in Aisne; 62 in Pas de Calais; 34 in Somme; 21 in Oise; and 24 in fourteen other departments. There were five works closed, but with sugar on hand, against nine the previous year.

The produce of the period stated had been 132,000,000 kilogrammes-an increase of 54,000,000 kilogrammes on the previous season. The quantity taken for consumption was 54,000,000 kilogrammes-an increase of 7,000,000 kilogrammes. The exports, deposits in warehouses, &c., amounted to 80,000,000 kilogrammes. Last year they were but 52,500,000 kilogrammes. On the 28th of February, the total in the warehouses of all kinds, and in all stages of manufacture, was 47,000,000 kilogrammes. At the same period in 1857, it was but 17,700,000 kilogrammes. There were in the entrepots 32,190,000 kilogrammes -an increase of 12,750,000.

AGRICULTURAL FAIR.

The great fair of the Illinois State Agricultural Society is to be held at Centralia on the 14th of September next, and great preparations are being made to concentrate there everything of interest in the great Mississippi Valley. The Illinois Central Railroad will run free trains night and day, for a distance of 100 miles each way on the road, and it is expected that the farmers will concentrate there with their families.

STATISTICS OF POPULATION, &c.

CENSUS OF NEW YORK.

We have received from Gideon J. Tucker, Secretary of State, the Census of the State of New York for 1855, taken in pursuance of the laws of this State, and prepared from original returns. The volume is a large quarto of 525 pages, and embraces elaborate statistical statements relating to population and the industrial interests of the State. Though its publication has been unavoidably delayed by the immense amount of labor expended in its preparation, the results are invaluable. One thousand seven hundred men were employed in the work, their aggregate labor being equal to the steady labor of one man for twenty years. The growth of the State since the year 1790, is shown by a comparison of the results of the various State and national censuses taken, inserted in the introduction. Tables giving the total population of each town, at each census since 1790, with the date of erection, &c., embrace information of much value, showing the development of our numbers and resources. Diagrams are introduced, to illustrate the changes of population in different sections of the State, and their mutual relations. The following items from the introductory table, giving the comparative results of national and State censuses, are of chief importance :

State census.

1840.

1845.

1850.

1855.

....

2,428,921

2,604,495

3,097,394

3,466,212

1,231,170 1,311,362

1,567,941

1,727,650

1,197,751 1,293,153

1,529,453

1,738,562

2,378,890

2,559,148

3,048,325

3,420,926