Page:History of the Indian Archipelago Vol 3.djvu/414

 398 COMMERCIAL DESCRIPTION OF Shell - - - 381 parts. Broken and rotten nuts lOy Good nuts - - 51 100 An arg-ument in favour of freelnoj the nutmeo-s from the sliell, which at first view appears plausi- ble, is the saving of freight or carriage, by dimi- nishing the bulk and weight by SSi per cent. But this argument is easily answered. The pack- ages or tare of the nutmegs, according to the pre- sent management, are 25 per cent, of the whole amount, so that the apparent saving in this re- spect is but 131 per cent., against which is to be balanced the expence of the packages, which are brought to the Moluccas from Java, as they must be made of teak, the only wood of the islands found to answer, — at least four months loss of time, with the labour of curing the nuts, the cost of the materials employed, and the effects of the depredation of the insect. There can be no doubt that the cost of bringing the nutmeg to market, therefore, is very greatly enhanced by the injudicious practice of freeing them from the shell, and this is satis- factorily proved by a comparison of the relative prices of the clove, the mace, and the nutmeg, in the early state of the commerce, before the present mode of treating the nutmeg was adopted, with the