502 BOTANICAL INFORMATION. 



thread, fit for making stockings and coloured goods; for 

 which reasons it ranks in value next after that of the Sea 

 islands of Georgia and Bourbon ; while that from Pernam- 

 buco is equal to the best kinds of Bahia, Cayenne and Surinam 

 cotton, far excelling the West and East Indian, the North 

 American and Levantine produce. While we were here, the 

 export, particularly to Liverpool, was uncommonly brisk; 

 and the subsequent dullness which took place in the sales, 

 was very sensibly felt. 



The Cotton Shrub of Maranhao belongs to those varieties 

 which produce black seeds, and of which it is not certain 

 whether a specific difference exists between the shrub and the 

 Pernambuco kind (Gossypium vitifolium, Lam.) Perhaps it is 

 G. purpurascens (G. racemosum, Poir. ?) The seeds, mostly 

 nine in a cell of the capsule, are covered on the upper sur- 

 face with long wool, whose pure whiteness is not frequently 

 changed to a pale yellowish hue by the constant rains. The 

 proportion of cotton wool to the seeds is particularly large, 

 for while four pounds of Pernambuco seeds produce one 

 pound of pure wool, the same weight is obtained from only 

 three pounds of the seeds of Maranhao cotton. 



The culture of this valuable shrub {the Cotton plant), ex- 

 tends almost all over the globe. It is pursued, not only 

 throughout tropical countries, but in North America, so far 

 as the 40th degree of latitude, in Sicily, in some districts of 

 Naples and Spain (lat. 41°) and under the same degree of 

 latitude it grows in Asia Minor, Persia, China and Japan. 

 In the southern hemisphere, this valuable plant thrives m 

 the province of Rio Grande do Sul, in Brazil (according to 

 Aug. de St. Hilaire), as far as the 31° degree of latitude in 

 South America ; while in the continent of Africa, it grows at 

 the Cape of Good Hope, and may be seen extending its 

 limits over many districts of the Australian Colonies, consi- 

 derably farther from the tropics than the latitude above 

 named. This consideration lends peculiar interest to the 

 mode of its culture, and it may therefore not be amiss here 

 to state some particulars of the growth of the cotton plant in 



