-504 BOTANICAL INFORMATION. 



before that time, and even so soon as five or six months after 

 sowing, but the cultivators do not generally gather it. At 

 Pernambuco, it frequently occurs that the heavy rains abate 

 in May, and then an early harvest of the ripening fruit com- 

 mences, of which the produce is called Sqfra do Maio ; but 

 is not much esteemed, in consequence of its yellowish colour. 

 That cotton which the shrub yields the first year, is generally 

 considered to be the best. The strongest shrubs will afford, 

 at the first harvest, 8 lbs. each of seed, giving 2\ lbs. of clean 

 wool ; and the weakest 1 lb. of seed, (5 oz. of pure cotton). 



Such is the prolific and certain nature of the cotton crop, as 

 it exists here in tropical regions, that many Fazendeiros never 

 pay any attention whatever to their plantations till the 

 harvest season arrives ; or, at most, the slaves are set to 

 pull up the superfluous plants where they spring too thick, 

 and to break off the top or leading shoot. This remissness 

 of the Fazendeiro, thus relying solely on the productive 

 bounty of the soil, is sometimes punished by that very cir- 

 cumstance ; for the fertility of the ground causes the whole 

 Algodoal (or cotton plantation,) to grow so high, and inter- 

 weaves the shrubs with such a dense mass of climbing weeds, 

 that it forms an impenetrable thicket, through which it is 

 impracticable to force one's way to gather the pods. The 

 diligent cultivator, on the contrary, here, as in Pernambuco 

 and Parnahyba, cleans the ground from weeds twice a-year, 

 viz : at the beginning and end of the rainy season. Those 

 weeds which are found most pernicious in the AlgodoaU, 

 are the various Convolvulacece, (here called Getirana,) as 

 Ipomcsa Quamoclit, L. and 7. hederacea, R. Br.), the plant 

 termed Erva de San Gaetano (Momordica macropetala, Mart.), 

 Grasses, and other low annuals, {Bucholzia ficoidea, and 

 Polygonoides, Mart., Alternanthera, Achyranthes, R. Br.) &c 

 By the careful cultivator, in addition to weeding, two 

 other precautions are used in this district, as in the more 

 southerly parts of Brazil, in Surinam, and Cayenne. They 

 consist in breaking off, as before mentioned, the upper 

 central shoot, and after the shrub has borne fruit, in re- 



