picking and manipulation. It requires a good, damp soil, easily irrigated, and well exposed to the sun. The grafted plants are placed two feet apart, in rows five feet apart. They must be cut down every spring to within a few inches of the ground. They flower abundantly from July to the end of October, and even later, though the flowers have little or no perfume. From the middle of July to the fifteenth of August the flowers are picked daily just about sunset, after August 15th they are usually picked in the morning as soon as the dew is off. The essential oil is so volatile that it cannot be extracted by distillation, the heated water decomposing it so that only a faint tinge of the perfume is left in the water that passes through the refrigerant.

"TUBEROSE. This beautiful bulb requires a rich moist soil that can be easily irrigated, and that is well exposed to the sun. The bulb, after being freed from suckers, is planted in April, and blooms abundantly fifteen months afterwards. The time of picking is from the middle of July to October. Like the jasmine, the oil cannot be extracted by distillation.

"CASSIE. This pretty flowering shrub is cultivated from seed planted in espaliers. The ground ought to be well prepared to the depth of four or five feet and exposed to the south. It does not require irrigation. The flowers are picked from the first of October to the end of December; but these picked in October have much more perfume and obtain a higher price. The perfume is not very agreeably by itself, but is much used in compounds."

The process of manufacturing is given as follows:

1. From roses, orange flowers and leaves, geraniums, lavender, thyme and rosemary, the genuine essential oils are extracted by distillation.

The roses and orange flowers have to be very carefully picked over, the bulbs and all leaves, and everytning which could discolor the product removed. They are then put into a still with water; the water is heated, and being thus infused with the flowers the steam rises filled with the oil of the flowers, and passes over into a tube which is coiled round and round in another cylinder filled with cold water, and which is called the refrigerant. Passing through the cold water, the steam is condensed and runs off into a glass receiver-the oil rising to the top, the perfumed water being below.

A ton of roses yields only two ounces of the attar. It is of a golden yellow color with a greenish tinge, which becomes more intense with age. If kept at a temperature below 60° it crystalizes; if kept open to air and light it is easily votalized.

The essential oil is also obtained from the fruit of the orange by rubbing the fruit in cups armed with pricks, as before described.

2. Perfumed oils are made by putting the flowers, after they have been carefully picked over, into the finest of virgin olive oil. Usually about twenty-five pounds of flowers are put into one hundred pounds of olive oil and left to infuse in the oil for one or two days; then the oil is warmed and strained, the flowers pressed to extract the oil from them; and then the same quantity of fresh flowers is again put into the oil, and this operation is repeated from twenty to twentyfive times. In this manner the perfumed oils of violet, jonquil, rose, orange and cassie are made.

3. POMADES.-It has been found that the essential oil of flowers, which gives them their perfume, has a strong affinity to lard or grease. Lard and suet are clarified and prepared in the most careful manner, and mingled in the proportion of two parts of lard to one of suet. The product is as white as snow. This grease, thus clarified and prepared, is gently warmed, and when it liquifies, the flowers, most carefully picked over, are put into it. They remain in the grease, being macerated and stirred up in it, for several hours, till the perfume is supposed to have been extracted. Then the liquid grease is strained off and the flowers pressed to extract the grease they retain. This process is repeated with fresh flowers for twenty or twenty-five days, till the pomade is saturated with the perfume. In this way we have pomade of rose, orange, violet, cassie.

The pomades of jasmine and tuberose are made in a different way, as their essential oils are dissipated and lost by the application of heat, either in distillation or maceration with heated grease. Frames of wood, about twenty inches equare, and somewhat like a schoolboy's slate, are made, a pane of glass being in place of the slate. These frames are so perfectly fitted to each other that when they are placed one upon the other the space between the pares of glass is almost hermetically sealed. No air can get in or out. When put one above the other, the spaces between the panes of glass are about half an inch in depth. Upon both sides of these panes of glass the finest clarified lard (pomade) is spread. The flowers of the jasmine, freshly picked, and if possible before they have lost any of their perfume, are sprinkled over the lard, and the frames are then put one upon another. Thus these delicate flowers are imprisoned in a little chamber of lard, and their perfume as it is exhaled is absorbed by the pomade. They remain so in prison for twenty-four hours, when, having lost their perfume, they are carefully taken off and fresh flowers put in their place. This process goes on for fifty days, during which time the pomade has to be occasionally turned so as to expose all its particles to the perfume. At last, when sufficiently saturated with perfume, it is scraped off the glass and clarified. This is jasmine pomade.

Jasmine perfumed oil is made by still another process. Thickly woven cotton sheets (similar to lamp cotton) are saturated with the finest virgin olive oil, and then placed upon wire netting, held on wooden frames. The flowers are sprinkled on these sheets, thus saturated with oil, and left for twenty-four hours, when they are taken off and fresh flowers put on. This is repeated for about two months, when the oil being sufficiently filled with perfume, the sheets are folded and pressed till the oil is pressed out. In a moderate sized manufactory about two thousand such frames are required. The flowers of the tuberose are treated in the same way as the jasmine.

4. EXTRACTS. This term is applied to the oils or perfumes when extracted by spirits of wine or alcohol.

Strong as is the affinity between the perfume of flowers and grease, the affinity for alcohol has been found to be still greater. Hence, if pomades are immersed in alcohol, the perfume is attracted to the alcohol and leaves the grease. In this way the pomade is left in the alcohol for five or six weeks, and stirred several times a day; at the end of the time the alcohol becomes sufficiently perfumed, and we have an extract.

Thus are produced the extracts of rose, orange, jasmine, tuberose, cassie and violet.

5. Orange flower water and rose water are important products of this busi. ness; they are distilled from the flowers, and become separated from the oils in the process of distillation. Orange flower water is considerably used as a kind of healthy medicinal beverage; it is mixed with "eau sucree.”

LOWER CALIFORNIA.

ITS CHARACTER AND RESOURCES.

Captain C. M. Scammon has made a report to J. Ross Browne upon the character and resources of the west coast of Lower California, which is condensed by the San Francisco Bulletin, as follows:

"Capt. Scammon says the whole extent of the west coast is quite barren, and its approaches bold, except at particular points. St. Bartolme and Magdalena Bay are both excellent harbors, and their entrances are free from all hidden dangers. The latter has an extent of navigable lagoons connected with it of over one hundred miles. There are many places where anchorage may be found, and roadsteads where a ship may lie and find some shelter from the prevailing coast winds; also numerous islets that afford some conveniences for shipping. The climate of western Lower California is a pleasant one. The principal sources of wealth have been its whale and seal fishing, guano and salt. The salt fields of Ojo Lebre, near the head of Scammon's Lagoon, are capable of supplying an almost unlimited quantity of excellent salt. Vessels of 400 tons burthen can find good anchorage within five miles of where the salt can be embarked in lighters of 25 to 50 tons capacity. Several cargoes were brought to San Francisco a few years ago, but the low price of the article, and the existence of supplies nearer home, made the trade unprofitable, and we believe it has been abandoned. Several remarkable lagoons exist along the coast, the entrances to which are often dangerous, and have been the cause of numerous disasters to shipping. These lagoons are the resorts of whales, and have been at times the scenes of great activity for whale fishers. When first entered for commercial purposes their waters were alive with whales, porpoises, and fish of many varieties. Tur tle and seal basked upon the shores of low islands, and game of many species was so abundant that the shoals left bare by the receding tides would be closely covered with geese, duck, snipe, and other species of sea fowl.

***66 Magdalena Bay and its adjacent lagoons were more largely resorted to for years by whalers. The bay itself is capacious, sheltered and safe, but the approaches to the lagoons are difficult if not always dangerous, lying over shoals, impassable except at high tide. At low water, says the report from which we quote, no one would imagine that a vessel of 200 to 300 tons could ever get over into the deep water between the divides. But the whaleman, after contending with the stormy elements and drifting ice of the Arctic Ocean, plies his ship towards the tropics to pass the winter months, seeking his source of wealth in a more temperate clime, with all the determination, energy and tact characteristic

of his calling. He now finds the object of pursuit, not in the fathomless blue water, but huddled together in narrow estuaries, the banks on either hand lined with the evergreen mangrove. Frequently the hollow sound of the spouting whale is heard through the trees, and the vapor ascending is seen above them. The vessel is lightened in every possible way, and by dint of running out anchors, heaving, hauling, grounding and listing, the ships cross the divides, and the whaling is pursued as though no unusual difficulties had been overcome, or none were again to be contended with to reach the open sea.' Whalers have ascended this lagoon 40 miles from its mouth, and then have only been three miles from the shore. The country about Magdalena Bay and its lagoons is generally barren and uninviting. Its resources are whales, fish, oysters, clams muscles and game. The natives who come from the interior to trade bring cattle, leather, raw hides, soap, cheese, figs, oranges, dates, pearls, shells, and in some instances silver manufactures; exchanging them for ready-made clothing, beavy cotton cloths, calicoes, tobacco and cutlery. They will sometimes come 40 or 50 miles to exchange a few arobes of fruit for necessary articles of family use. The quantity of oil taken from 1856 to 1861 is estimated at 34,425 bar rels, worth about $516,375. The annual oil receipts from that quarter have fallen off greatly. Quantities of turtle used to be taken in the bay, and some are still brought from there to San Francisco.

There are fifteen islands off the west coast of the peninsula. They are generally high and wooded, und from their garniture of green, have a more inviting look than the mainland. Some of them afford good shelter for vessels. The highest point on St. Guadaloupe, one of the largest of the group, is about 3,400 feet above the sea, and covered with the pine and cedros. Goats abound in the ravines, and fur seal and sea elephants once made the island a favorite resort. Some prisoners of state were once banished here from Mexico, and a party of miserables-probably the same-were taken off a few years ago by an American vessel which chanced to see their signal. Elide Island was covered with guanc till the exhaustion of the supply subsequent to 1857, about 28,000 tons having been obtained altogether. Chester's Island also yielded guano for a few years Cedros Islar.d, the largest of all, is well known to Californians from the scientific and mining explorations of which it has been the scene. Its mountain peaks are visible 60 miles at sea. Its aspect is forbidding, its climate exceedingly dry. Much of its vegetation is peculiar, and has furnished many new species to botanists. The "fayfay " tree yields a medicinal gum, which is made into an ointment with the tallow of the native goat. A few deer are found. The island was formerly a great resort for the hunters of the seal, sea elephant and otter. Other islands are the homes of innumerable sea fowls, and have furnished small quantities of guano, but this staple is now pretty much exhausted. The whale and seal fisheries, which have been from the beginning monopolized by Americans, are also nearly exhausted. On the whole, the western coast of Lower California does not offer much inducement to American enterprise. The interior must be more productive to sustain the numerous herds of cattle that rauge through the hills and valleys from Cape St.Lucas to San Diego."

MARINE INSURANCE IN ENGLAND.

PAST AND PRESENT UNDERWRITERS.

Marine insurance was practised in England before it was in use in the northern part of the continent of Europe; and even Antwerp, then in the meridian of its commercial eminence, derived it from English merchants. In 1560, Guicciardini states that the traders of England and the Netherlands "have fallen into a way of insuring their merchandise at sea by a joint contribution"; and we may perhaps assume with safety that about this period the practice became tolerably general in the commercial world of Europe.

By 1601 the amount of underwriting business done on the London Exchange had become so considerable, that an act of Parliament was in that year passed for the establishment of a Court of Policies to decide disputes arising out of these documents. For reasons on which we need not now dwell, this tribunal failed to attract much business; and although it was subsequently reconstituted on an improved basis in the reign of Charles II., it had even then no better fate, and ultimately expired of sheer inanition. Insurance was originally carried on in England, as in Venice and on the continent generally, by individual underwriters in Lombard street, who afterwards, for their own convenience and that of the insured, assembled at a coffee-house-the first establishment of the kind in England-which was opened in a yard off that street about the middle of the seventeenth century. In 1710 they transferred their place of meeting to another coffee-house opened by a person named Lloyd in Abchurch lane-and it is from this Lloyd that the body of English underwriters have since acquired the sort of corporate name under which they are known all over the world.

In 1720 the two first insurance companies-the London Assurance and the Royal Exchange Assurance-were incorporated. They owed their existence to the necessities of George I.; and the consideration on which they obtained their charters was the promise-eventually only half fulfilled-to pay his Majesty a sum of £600,000. Established in the year of the South Sea mania, the stock of the two companies was soon raised to an extravagant premium; bat when the financial bubble burst, it experienced a more than corresponding depression, and from that circumstance and an accumulation of disasters at sea, they were for some time involved in serious difficulties. Eventually, however, these difficulties were surmounted, and for more than a hundred years they succeeded in maintain. ing their exclusive privileges as the only insurance company sanctioned or permitted by law. It required at least fourteen years' agitation to convince Par. liament of the impolicy of continuing this monopoly.

In 1810 the New Insurance Company was formed, with a capital of £5,000,000 sterling, and Parliament was appealed to in order remove the restrictions which prevented its entering upon business. After an elaborate and lengthened inquiry into the subject, a committee of the House of Commons reported that the exclusive privileges of the two great companies should be repealed, and that encouragement should be given to other associations for the promotion of sea-insurance. The influence of the monopolists was, however, sufficient to protract the contest for fourteen years; and it was not until 1824 that marine insurance was thrown open, like life and fire insurance, to