to the summer of 1849-and the table of imports and exports prove that this handsome mercantile fleet would be doubled, if purchase and supply were relieved from the multifarious trammels of the Spanish tariff. The Cubans import $20,000,000 a year of such commodities as the United States produce, and could sell on better terms than the Island can buy of distant Europe, if they were permitted to compete in open market, and these commodities would be conveyed to her in our own ships.

Of the $60,000,000 of annual imports and exports of this fertile and extensive Island, three-fourths ought, and would be, managed by our merchant marine, if it were embraced by our government.

The shipping interest is, however, but one item of the disfavors and exclusions endured by the States, under the sternly restrictive colonial system of Spain, and as it may suddenly cast before our citizens to decide whether Cuba shall be incorporated in the Union, it will not be amiss to enter into some computations.

In 1846, a fraction more than one-fourth of the entire imports of Cuba were from the United States, and if the same ratio holds good, as is probɛble, we send to Cuba the current year about $8,000,000 in American productions. Meanwhile something more than $10,000,000 of similar articles of commerce are brought in from Europe, to the heavy disadvantage of the Cubans, by a stringent system of protection for Spanish products. To specify:Flour from Spain pays a duty of only $2 50 the barrel, but from this country, and in American ships, it pays $10 50. Thus to compel the Cubans to eat the inferior Spanish flour, injured by a sea voyage of 4,000 miles, this enormous tax is laid on an essential article of daily use, though, for the sake of revenue, $250 is also laid on the article from the mother country. These duties, freight, and other expenses, raises the cost to the consumer to $18 and $20 a barrel, and limits, of necessity, the luxury of good bread to the wealthier classes. Set aside these impediments, and instead of the 300,000 barrels now entered, and chiefly from Spain, (according to La Verdad,) 1,500,000 barrels would be annually demanded by the 1,200,000 inhabitants of Cuba. The climate and soil of Cuba is not adapted to the profitable cultivation of the kinds of provisions which the habits of the day calls for; but she produces exactly what will most acceptably pay for them where they are best, nearest, and most abundant-in the United States. If Cuba wants flour, fish, cured meats, and other provisions, to the amount of $10,000,000, which she could, in unshackled trade, buy of us better than anywhere else; if she requires, in articles for house and field, in fabrics of raiment, necessity or luxury, to the amount of $10,000,000 more, so too do the United States import 150,000,000 lbs. of coffee, at $8,000,000, and sugar to the amount of $9,000,000, which, under the impetus of freedom, and the encouragement of a profitable reciprocity, Cuba could very well supply. It must be borne in mind that a vast amount of rich coffee and sugar land lies waste and untouched on that Island, which would bloom into a garden, under the genial breath of liberal institutions, as her own staticians estimate but one-ninth of the soil enclosed. The Upper Mississippi and the Ohio States are the chief losers by the flour exclusion; for Cuba, fronting, as she does, the outlet of that mighty valley, is very accessible to that trade; but all the grain States share in the loss, for they all buy sugar and coffee, and could all undersell Europe in the ports of Cuba. The mineral region is also a larger loser than at the first glance would be thought possible. The staples of Cuba are raised at a considerable expenditure of implements and machinery, in which iron and cop

per hold a conspicuous share. That class of imports, nearly all of which are manufactured in this country, but are discouraged from seeking a market in Cuba, by an average impost of 35 per cent, are brought in, to the amount of $2,000,000 annually, and with a steady increase of demand. This should, of right, almost entirely be paid to the forges and workshops of Pennsylvania, and the States west of her, who construct matters in question, such as ploughs, hoes, spades, boilers, and all the etceteras of southern husbandry, and sell them in all the markets in our Gulf and Atlantic States, from 80 to 200 per cent less than the overtariffed Cuban pays for the like. Consider the effect of these exhorbitant charges on provisions and implements on the net receipts of production.

Neither does the clothing, furniture, and conveyances of the producer escape these excessive contributions, and again equally to the disadvantage of American industry. Carts, carriages, and furniture, pay about 100 per cent; yet, on account of bulk and distance, Spain leaves to us the principal supply, even under this liberal protection. The Eastern and Middle States send about $1,000,000 a year-at a rough estimate, for there is no reliable data at hand ―of these conveniences; but still the Island is scantily supplied. Cotton and woolen goods range from 27 to 334 per cent duty by the letter of the tariff; but under their system of re-appraisal, they pay more, and the official returns show upwards of $3,000,000 in desriptions of goods manufactured in the New England States, and sold in our retail markets, all over the Union, at from 30 to 100 per cent less than in Cuba, whose producers in this way lose one-third or one-half the benefits of their income. A careful revision of the charges on imports corresponding to our list of American fabrics and productions, with the invoice prices, and the usual rates paid by the consumer, will convince the simplest understanding that is willing to be candid, that $20,000,000 of the $30,000,000 (keeping to round and approximate numbers) of annual imports into Cuba, ought, if the interests and convenience of the direct producers and purchasers were consulted, to come to the industrial classes of the Union. Not only would the fostering dew of $20,000,000 support in comfort many thousand families now landing on our shores, in search of homes and employment, but it would bring to the tables of all our people the delicate fruits of the torrid zone, in which Cuba abounds, at prices far below anything we have ever known. The rapid steam intercommunication between sister States, and the splendid geographical position of the "Key of the Gulf," would bring Havana as near St. Louis and New York, as they are to each other, or to New Orleans, and in more prompt interchange with all the cities of the Gulf and Atlantic coasts, than those coasts can be with each other.

Relieved from the iron net of domestic repression, under which Cuba now suffocates, and fairly launched into free traffic with the Northern States, her citizens would send their children here by hundreds, for education, and come themselves by thousands, to enjoy the bracing air of a higher latitude, while return thousands from the North would hasten there in the winter, to enjoy her perpetual spring and ceaseless round of fruits and flowers, which are fairest and brightest in Cuba when our fields are buried under chilling robes of frost and snow. This facility of changing climate, and living always in the smiles of summer, will be felt in the liberal patronage of her packet lines; and when we add to this the central position of the Island with regard to mail and business lines from California and the Pacific, from Central and South America, and from the British, French, and Danish West Indies, its

importance to our steam marine is easily understood. As an open, safe, and reliable haven of rest, aid, and supply, beyond any fear of foreign hostility or interference, standing midway as she does on the path from the Atlantic to the Gulf, from the Atlantic to the Facific, by the way of either isthmus, and most particularly by the Isthmus of Cortes, the shortest though most overlooked of all of them, and commanding the ingress and egress to the Gulf, and all the coast of Mexico, the control of this Island is of immense, of uncomputable importance to the dignity and independence of our coast commerce. It even stands interferingly in the way between the Atlantic ports and the Gulf terminus of the short land route to California, on our own soil, now in course of survey by the United States engineers, and which a pioneer merchant train, of 80 wagoners, is now traversing under General W. L. Cazneau, with a view to penetrate to the markets of New Mexico, and the unvisited Centralia between Texas and California, by the new and straight line from Corpus Christi and the Paso del Norte. It is the priceless jewel that clasps into one magnificent, unbroken chain, the vast circle of our Pacific, Gulf, and Atlantic trade. We only require this one link to belt 5,000 miles of sea-board in close and continuous mart and commercial unity, presenting, on every side, a well connected defence against the pretensions of rival or enemy. Whenever the trembling, restless Seal of the Gulf drops from the nerveless finger of Spain, there will be some envy in Europe, but little open resistance made to its passing into the grasp of our Eagle; and if he assumes the charge, Europe will retire from this continent, and thenceforth on all our coasts we will ask nothing but our steam marine, and the splendor of our flag to command the respect of the world for our commerce.

C. M.

Art. VI. THE PRAIRIES: WHAT HAS CAUSED THEM?

How many ingenious theories have been got up, and what a multitude of facts, in their support, to account for these natural meadows!

Like the Cosmogonists, our prairie causationists have been divided into Plutonian and Neptunian parties; and, between these, a party of Trimmers, who call to their aid both fire and water.

To a limited extent, all these have come near to the truth. There are, doubtless, many expansions of grass and flowers, caused by the burning of forests, the drainage of water from basins, and by the two united. It is well known, too, that shoal and quiet waters are displaced by a vegetable growth, which, in the course of ages, converts ponds and lakes into meadows. But, to our apprehension, all the prairies originating from these causes constitute scarcely the thousandth part of the vast plains of grass and flowers covering more than half the land in the northern hemisphere of the earth.

Why is it, that trees, shrubs, and herbaceous plants occupy different and distinct positions on the surface of our globe? What causes one kind of tree to prevail in one locality, and a different kind in another locality, having, in appearance, a like soil, climate, and situation?

We shall hint at, rather than fully explain, what we believe to be a great law of this organic being, on whose solid surface we move and think. The poetic fancy, which makes the earth of the feminine gender, would, if followed out, warrant many conclusions which, though not infallible, must be allowed to be plausible.

She has her every-day dress, and her fancy dress. In general, as green becomes her complexion best, she decides "that green it shall be." But though, according to geologists, several million years of age, she has the love of novelty and change proper in a beauty of eighteen. She is never satisfied with one color, but mixes with every shade of green which her ingenuity can devise, every variety of color, and every shade of every vareity, in combinations beyond the power of numbers to express. Still she is not satisfied. All the beauty of colors, and forms, beyond the imagination of man to conceive, she has lavished on her outward form, yet she does not allow her dress to remain unchanged for a single day; no, not for an hour; not for one little minute.

Her zone of greatest beauty opens when the sun begins his warm smiles upon her, with a modest green, occasionally sprinkled with blue. Day by day, as her lover increases in warmth, her dress becomes more showey, until the autumn finds her bedecked with the most gaudy colors. At length, like other lovers, her beloved sun grows cold. She shows a becoming sensibility, by throwing aside all her gay attire, and putting on a mourning dress of brown and pure white. Nor is she satisfied to wear, the following season, the same ornaments with which she decked herself the preceding. In short, change ceaseless change-is her law and her delight. Let us now leave this fanciful illustration, and view the subject in the light of facts.

It is a known law of vegetable life, that plants, after using up the proper food where they grow, give place to other plants, whose proper food is left in the soil, unused by their predecessors; and that the excrement of one class of plants is proper food for another class, though unnutricious, and, perhaps, poisonous to its own.

Geologists tell us that the vegetable growth, some thousands of years ago, was, in many respects, greatly unlike that which now covers the solid ground of our earth. Changes of temperature and constituents of soil, are going on from age to age, and correspondent changes take place in the vegetable kingdom. Over large tracts, once green with ferns, stately trees have succeeded, followed, in a course of ages, by grasses, and other herbaceous plants. One class of trees has had its day, exausted the soil of appropriate pabulum, and filled it with an excrement which, in time, it came to loathe. Another, and different class, has sprung up in its place, luxuriated on the excrement and decay of its predecessor, and, in turn, given way for a successor, destined to the same ultimate fate. Thus, one after another, the stately tribes of the forest have arisen, flourished, and fell, until the soil has become, in a measure, exhausted of the proper food of trees, and become well fitted for the growth of herbaceous plants. These, in their turn, have taken possession of the fertile plains, and had their round of successions, until they, too, like the people of Sodom, have wearied the earth with their impurities, and have been swept away, for a race of plants better adapted to the growing lights of the age.

The life of man is but a point in the endless line of time. It scarcely reaches one fourth the duration of many a tree of the forest. The range of his individual observation is, therefore, extremely limited. And yet he has seen, clearly, the operation of the great law of change exhibited in the vegetable world. He has seen a crop of pines spring up and grow on a surface denuded of oaks and hickories. And, on the other hand, he has seen a thrifty growth of deciduous trees spring up, after the ground has been cleared of evergreens. Soft wood, deciduous trees, he has witnessed, taking the

place of the hard; and vice versa. Changes in herbaceous plants are still more observable. In large districts of our country, where wheat was once a common crop, it has almost ceased to be grown. Where it was formerly grown with little care, year after year, it is now cultivated with success only by new manures, and as one crop of a rotation. Rotations which once answered the purpose of the cultivator, have, in time, required the introduction of new crops and new manures, to ensure success. For a time, more perfect culture kept the crop from deterioration. Then a more extended list in the rotation, embracing root crops. Following this, is a deeper cultivation, by means of subsoil ploughing, and underground drainage, enabling the roots to get food from a soil before out of their reach. Cotemporaneous with these improvements have been discoveries in science, by which the soil has been renovated with new chemical agents. But with all these paliatives, ground long cultivated in Cereal grains is deteriorating for their production; and much of the grain-eating population of the world is now fed from fields lately opened in the wilds of North America and Russia.

The inquiry, what has caused our prairies, seems, then, to deserve attention, as a practical question. The grasses with which these vast plains are covered, may have had their round of changes, until the best food of that class of plants has become nearly supplanted by the excrement which they loathe. The very rapid growth of trees and shrubs, planted on prairie ground, seems to favor the idea that the time has arrived for the great change to take place, from grass to trees. The inferiority of the growth of cultivated grasses, on the prairies, favors the same conclusion. Almost everywhere, the timber land, when cleared, is more productive in the grasses than the prairies; and equally general is the superiority of the prairie, in the growth of newly-planted trees, over lands cleared of timber. The Cereal grasses— maize, oats, and wheat, are new to the prairie, and will, for a time, succeed in a good degree. With equal fertility and adaptedness, in other respects, it is pretty certain that land cleared of a heavy growth of timber, produces, one year with another, better crops of wheat than prairie. How much the difference is, and how fast that difference will increase, remains to be tested by longer experience.

We conclude, then, that a fixed law governs the change from one class of vegetation to another; causing the earth to bring forth crops in rotation, occupying untold centuries, giving, at different times, to different lands, natural meadows and forests, such in extent and beauty, as the generations of men have scarcely, in imagination, conceived themselves capable of imitating, much less of rivaling.

Art. VII-STOPPAGE IN TRANSITU..

THE legal power which is given to a seller of goods to retake them before they enter the possession of the party to whom they are sold, is called stoppage in transitu. This privilege originated in Equity, and was subsequently sanctioned by the courts of law.

It is founded upon the presumption, that, until the goods reach the vendee, at the place to which they are consigned, the seller retains over them a pledge, and justice requires that, until that event, he shall be privileged to retake the property, and thus avoid the consequences of the vendee's insol