LONDON TROPICS.
Outside Kew there is a garden almost in London where you can see in flourishing growth almost all the economic plants there are in many varieties : tea, coffee, cocoa, rubber, cocaine, cinnamon and pepper. As a treat, I was allowed to feel the softness of Egyptian cotton bursting from its seed- sheath. It recalled the picking of cotton in Queensland, which can produce as fine cotton even as Egypt ; and some day per- haps will, when the economic side is as well understood as the botanic. The dream that Australian cotton may one day compare in importance with Australian wool was shared by too many sane and thoughtful men to be wholly fantastic. These London-bred plants are continually being sent out to remote places, not all or nearly all within the Empire. A consignment went a week or two ago to Brazil as well as to Kenya. Our export of tropical plants would not make much show in the National Budget, but may figure largely in trade returns of a wider and more lasting sort than any Government statistician envisages. Just as spartina grass is giving grazing value to else barren marshes in Essex, the selection of particular strains of fodder plants may double the value of African wastes. Fodder is only less important than food.
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