POPULATION OF THE CANADAS.

The result of the late population returns has been published. From it we learn that, for the first time, the population of Upper exceeds that of Lower Canada. The Upper Province has increased more rapidly in population within the last four years, than in any similar period which preceded it, with the single exception of the four years between 1830 and 1834, a time of extraordinary emigration:—

In the ten years from 1841 to the end of 1851, the population was considerably more than doubled, while during the same period, that of the neighboring Union only

increased a little more than a third.

The population of the Lower Province is announced by the Quebec Canadian at 904,782, a much larger number than was expected, which leaves a majority to Upper Canada of only 45,748. The Lower Province, the last eight years, has been advaneing faster than ever before, as will be seen by the following statement:

Great as this is, the same period of eight years has enlarged the population of Upper Canada far more:

1852.

950,530

904,782

40 to 45 souls.

25 to 30 families.

MONTREAL-Ville Marie, now called Montreal, had on the

17th May, 1642.

1650.

1677.

Per census, 1720.

1750.

1765.

1805.

1831.

1835.

1842.

1852.

1,500 to 1,600 souls.

8,000

4,000

7,000

9,020

27,297

31,193

40,464

57,715

PROGRESS OF POPULATION IN SAN FRANCISCO.

The San Francisco Herald says that the population of that place, drawn from every quarter of the globe, and made up of every race, continues to increase with astonishing rapidity. The number of passengers landed at San Francisco during the month of May was as follows:

From Panama, by steamers and sail vessels

The Herald adds, that the departures during the month were unusually few, probably not exceeding fifteen hundred; and it estimates that the population of the State will be increased during the present year at least one hundred thousand.

MERCANTILE MISCELLANIES.

AN IMPORTANT COMMERCIAL SUGGESTION.

It is well known to the government of the United States, to the merchants of our great cities, and to large classes of the community, that even under the liberal arrangements of the tariff of 1846, smuggling is still carried on to a very great extent. There are many causes for this state of things, which cannot be obviated by human wisdom, nor by legislative enactment; but a suggestion has been so often made to us, confirmed by so many illustrations, and sustained by so many facts that have come within our own knowledge, that we feel it a duty that we owe to the government, to the Commerce and to the people of the country, to amplify it in a page or two of the Merchants' Magazine.

By the original statutes of Congress, a provision was made, which required that every invoice of goods purchased in a foreign country, should be sworn to as a true exhibit of facts, by the purchaser, or agent of the capitalist, in the place where the goods were bought. Unfortunately, the spirit of this rule has been continually violated. It has so happened that in a very large majority of instances, perhaps, the goods which have been purchased in inland towns, as in the case of Manchester, Sheffield, Birmingham, Lyons, Paris, Geneva, Turin, Florence and Rome, have been transported to the coast, before the regular invoices for the purchase of the same have been exhibited before the American consul and sworn to, in order to comply with the requisitions of the law.

We shall confine the few remarks we have to make, chiefly to the city of Lyons. It is well known that most of the silk goods manufactured in Europe and imported into this country, are purchased in the city of Lyons. Our purchases of silk goods in that town during the last few years, have not fallen much short of $25,000,000 on an average; and yet very few of the invoices of these goods, have been sworn to before the American consul in that port.

We do not know what may be the motives of our merchants, or of their commercial agents, in this course; but we are perfectly sure from representations which have been made to us from many quarters, that the result is particularly deleterious to the revenue of the Federal Government. Every reader knows, that silk goods being capable of transport and introduction with great facility, in consequence of the compactness with which they can be carried, admit of being brought into this country, under evasions of the customs laws, as very few other goods can be. If our information is to be relied upon, several hundred cases of valuable Lyonese silks are every year smuggled into the city of New York, whose aggregate value amounts to several millions of dollars.

Now it must be evident to the most common reader, that the only effectual way of preventing this source of depletion to the public revenue, is to procure the publication of a specific order from the financial department of the government, in concurrence, if need be, with that of the department of state, requiring that in every instance, without exception, the purchaser of goods in foreign countries, shall give his oath to the accuracy and truth of the invoice before the American consul in the place where the goods are purchased.

It must be evident on the first blush, that if this order were issued, the consul would have the authority to enforce it, and the consequence would inevitably be, that he would be able to detect any contemplated frauds upon the revenue long before those

frauds could be carried into effect. For knowing all the manufactories of the products that are exported, the consul would have no difficulty in procuring from the proprietors weekly tables of the goods which they had manufactured for or sold to American capitalists; and wherever any invoice of goods has been shipped, a reference to the records of the consulate would enable the consul at once to detect any attempt that was being made to take goods from a foreign port, for introduction into the United States, without an honest purpose of having a fair exhibit made of them before the authorities of the American customs, at the ports were the importations were made. Great complaints are made by the government, and by our honest and upright merchants, of the frauds that are being continually practiced upon the revenues of our government. But we can discover no mode so effectual, if indeed there be any mode whatever besides this, of putting an end to these frauds at once and forever. Respectable merchants, certainly, can raise no objection against such an arrangement; and we rejoice that it is the intention of the administration now in power, to issue such an order, and we doubt not that it will be attended with the most beneficial results. Although we trust that the time is not far distant, when the principles of Free Trade, by the concurrence of all great commercial nations, will be carried into general effect; still, nothing can be more repugnant to the sense of honesty and of truth, which lies at the basis of all sound commercial arrangements, than the fact that dishonest, selfish, and dishonorable speculators, should be able, by their trickery and corrupt means, to get ahead of the honest, industrious and honorable merchants of the country, and by such unfair means secure advantages to themselves, which are attended with the most lamentable and degrading results upon the general progress of Commerce.

We trust that our information is derived from authentic sources, and that there will be no delay in the issuing of an order which will procure the result that we have so long labored for, and which we can imagine no other means for so effectually bringing about.

METHOD OF CONSTRUCTING BANK NOTES TO PREVENT FORGERY.*

This is a book of exceeding interest and importance to the business community. It relates to an intricate subject, of which but little is known; yet, in which, all who have to do with bank bills, have a vital personal concern. No reader of the bank note detectors can fail of the impression, that the paper currency of the country is in a perilous state. The number and ingenuity of counterfeits that are made upon the best banks in the country, are creating a confusion which threatens to render our currency universally unsafe and worthless. No bank is exempt; and no skill or artistic merit is beyond the reach of the counterfeiter's attack.

The evil has become enormous, and appears to be increasing. Laws can afford but a feeble protection against it; for of all crimes, counterfeiting is the most stealthy and astute. What is to be done? is the anxious question which many a business man has asked himself.

The source of this great evil, Mr. Ormsby, in this volume, clearly and undeniably demonstrates. He shows by a process of reasoning which no mind can resist, that counterfeiting is inevitable so long as the present system of bank note engraving is persisted in.

Our notes consist of a variety of title pictures, vignettes, scroll work, denominational figures, &c., all detached, and as it appears from this work, engraved separately, and introduced upon the plate by machinery, for the sake of economy. Though we

A description of the present system of bank note engraving, showing its tendency to facilitate counterfeiting. To which is added, A New Method of constructing Bank Notes to prevent Forgery. By William L. Ormsby. New York: W. L. Ormsby, 1852.

believe that no kind of engraving costs so much as bank notes, it appears that none is so easily and cheaply done. The use of dies and machinery, while it secures great profits to the engraver, puts it in the power of the counterfeiter to imitate any work however good. He can obtain machinery and dies as well as the bank note engraver, for they are in the market, and can be had at trifling prices by any one that wishes them. The counterfeiter, moreover, finds it perfectly easy to procure the separate portions of a bill from different engravers, without any knowledge on their part of his design. Here then lies the real source of the difficulty-the patchwork style of engraving and the use of machinery and dies.

Mr. Ormsby proposes to strike at the root of the evil, by requiring of every bill one complete and indivisible design, covering the whole surface of the bill, with the lettering intervoven by the hand of the artist so as to form an integral part of the design. This will compel the forger to do the whole work himself; which he cannot do without being a good engraver. He cannot go to one artist with one pretense for one part and to another for another part, without either knowing the ultimate design for which they are to be used, and then combine them together; any more than he could obtain the engraving of a portrait, by procuring the eye of one artist and the nose of another. Each bank, moreover, would hold its own plate, and no part of it could be used for other bills, as is now the case with dies.

We see not, why Mr. Ormsby has not discovered a complete and practicable remedy for this great and growing evil of counterfeiting. He has shown, beyond cavil, the utter weakness and insecurity of the present system of engraving; and the attention of the banks ought to be instantly given to the subject.

They have a deep concern in it, as have the public also. When counterfeiting has become so great, and such incalculable losses are entailed upon the community, it is `the least that can be righteously demanded of our banks, that they take the pains to examine the subject. A remedy, plausible at least, is offered to them. Whose will be the guilt, if the evil goes on unchecked, and the public be robbed by the introduction of counterfeits against which there is no means of guarding under the present system? We ought to say, that the work is splendidly executed, in large octavo, illustrated with a great number of beautiful plates, and bound in admirable style. It would be an ornament to any center table, and possesses an interest which ought to secure for it an extended sale.

POLKA NUTS: A NEW ARTICLE OF COMMERCE.

FREEMAN HUNT, Editor of the Merchants' Magazine, etc. :—

DEAR SIR:-Herewith you will receive a specimen of a quantity of nuts recently imported from Cape de Verd. Soon after they were landed, the writer-who has been in the wholesale drug business for many years-was accosted on 'Change by Dr. Pierce, the very intelligent and scientific Drug Inspector at this port, who stated that several sailors and laboring men had eaten of them, and had become seriously sickened by this gratification of their curiosity. The article was entered at the Custom-house by the consignee as " Polka Nuts," which was supposed to be the vulgar name at the islands.

Another importation of the same article from Boa Vista, Gambia, has been entered by another house as “Pulga Nuts;" a sample of these are also inclosed to you. The two specimens are plainly designated upon the envelopes, but the perfect similarity is readily discernable.

The sudden and decided effects on the parties who had partaken of this new article of Commerce, led to the anxious inquiries,-What can it be? Are these nuts poisonous ?

The above inquiries elicited the accompanying communications, which, if considered as suited to the pages of your Journal, you are at liberty to insert As these nuts yield largely an oil adapted to machinery and illuminating purposes, it is not improbable that during the present high prices of sperm and other oils suited to these uses, they may become an article of very considerable importation. It will therefore be perceived that there is at least a possibility that the publication of this corrrespondence may serve as a benevolent check to the disposition of some persons to prove the qualities of substances, by tasting and even swallowing, before becoming acquainted with the nature and power of the articles so unhesitatingly received into their stomachs. Nuts are particularly attractive to boys and laborers in the stores of merchants and upon our wharves; and it would be well for them to know that several kinds of the nuts of Commerce are powerfully medicinal, and some decidedly poisonous. BOSTON, September 22, 1852.

W. A. B. BOSTON, July 20, 1852.

DEAR SIR-With thanks for the specimen of the "Polka Nuts from Cape de Verd.” I have queried whether or not they may be one and the same with the "Physic Nuts" of the East and of South America. What think you? I give an extract from Pareira on that article. Yours, truly,

WM. A. BREWER.

[Extract from Pareira's Elements, &c., London Edition, Vol. II., p. 1,133.]

EUPHORBIACEÆ.

JATROPHA CURCAS.-[Polka Nuts of Cape De Verd ?—w. a. B.]

"Jatropha Curcas is a native of South America and Asia. Its fruit is the nuz cathartica Americana, or nux Carbadensis of some writers. Its seeds, which are occasionally met with in the shops, are called physic nuts (semina ricini majoris, or gros pignon d'Inde.) Pelletier and Caventon analyzed them under the name of Croton Seeds, and extracted from them a volatile acrid acid, called jatrophic acid, (see page 1,112.) Mr. Bennett swallowed four seeds, and experienced a very unpleasant burning sensation in the stomach and bowels, with nausea, which, after an interval of nearly two hours, terminated in vomiting: their purgative effects followed soon afterwards, and were mild; the sickness had then nearly passed away, but the burning sensation continued for some time longer. In large doses they are energetic poisons. "The oil (Oleum Jatropha Curcadis seu Oleum Infernale) is analogous in its properties to Croton Oil. It is occasionally used as a drastic purgative. In India it is used for lamps."

DR. Wм. A. BREWER, Boston:—

CAMBRIDGE, July 26, 1852.

DEAR SIR-I have been absent from town for the last three days, or else I should sooner have answered your kind communication on the Polka Nut.

I think, with yourself, that it must be the “Jatropha Curcas,” and the following description from the "Dictionnaire des Drogues, by Chevalliers, Richard & Guillemin," confirms your extract from Pareira.

"It very much resembles the castor oil seed, but is much larger." **** "It is of a blackish brown color, convex on one side, flat on the other, with a slightly prominent longitudinal line on both faces. The internal seed is invested with a pellicle, and its white, oily albumen incloses a large embryo, formed of two foliaceous cotyledons, which can be easily separated from each other."

I see, also, that Wood & Bache allude to these nuts under the head of Barbadoes Nuts, in the appendix of the United States Dispensatory, ninth edition, and state that "the fruit is a three-celled capsule, containing one seed in each cell, and is about the size of a walnut." Out of the whole lot I could only find one specimen of the fruit, and this corresponds to the above description.

Merat & Delens, in the Dict. de Mat. Med., state that the oil is intermediate in its cathartic power between croton and castor oil, Yours truly,

C. H. PIERCE.

Journ. de Pharm., t. xv., page 514.

+ Lond. Med. Gaz., ix., 8.