Volume 1

Essay on the productive resources of India / By J.F. Royle.

  • John Forbes Royle
Date:
1840
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Essay on the productive resources of India / By J.F. Royle. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    with unbounded Commerce.* India, early cele- India. brated for the richness and variety of its Products, as well as for the Manufacturing skill ofits inha- Agricultural. bitants, may in the present day rather be consi- dered as a great Agricultural country. It is sometimes made a subject of discussion, Commence, what parts of the world were first peopled, and became great agricultural and commercial na- tions ; and it is generally supposed that the ex- change of commodities first became considerable . in Mesopotamia, Egypt, and on the coasts of ranyhistoryof Arabia. We now know, that Arabia produces none of those valuable products for which, in ancient times, it was so celebrated ; the Arabians must therefore have obtained them from the regions where they were produced. ‘The nearest of these are the peninsula of India and the island. indian. of Ceylon; and as we learn from history that caravans entered into and departed from the north-western parts of India, it is evident that its * Dr. Buckland, in his Bridgewater ‘Treatise—Geology and Mineralogy, has happily observed, vol. i. p. 2, that if three foreigners were to land at separate points and travel over different parts of Great Britain, which he points out, ‘“ One would repres sent it as a thinly-peopled region of barren mountains; ane- ther, as a land of rich pastures, crowded with a flourishing population of manufacturers; the third, as a great corn-field, occupied by persons exclusively engaged in the pursuits of hus- bandry.” These dissimilar conditions,’ Dr. B. observes, “ of three great divisions of our country, result from differences in the geological structure of the districts, through which our three travellers have been conducted.”
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