90 ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE BOTANY OF [Malvacee. 
other countries to see if there were not among them some suited to the peculiarities of their 
country and climate. Mr. Spalding, in an interesting letter published in the evidence 
before the East-Indian Committee, informs us that the cultivators in America confine 
their attention to such plants as are of annual growth. Ist. The xankeen cotton introduced 
at an early period from China ; this is abundant in produce, but the seed, covered with 
down, produces wool of a dirty yellow colour, which does not bring the price of the 
other short staple cottons. 2d. The green-seed cotton, with white wool, which, with 
the former, is grown in the middle and upland districts, whence the latter is called 
upland cotton, also short staple cotton; and from the mode in which it was cleaned, bowed 
Georgia cotton. This, Mr. S. says, was cultivated in Georgia and Carolina previous to 
the revolutionary war, and considers it impossible to trace whence it was introduced, 
but supposes it may have been from Smyrna by one of the southern states. To this it 
may be objected, that G. Aerbaceum, with grayish seed, being the kind generally culti- 
vated in Asia Minor, this green-seed cotton is probably one of the cultivated varieties 
of G. hirsutum. 3d. The sea island, or long staple cotton, which is distinguished by the 
black colour of its seed, and the fine, white, strong, and silky long staple by which it is 
surrounded. This is grown in the lower country near the sea, and on several small 
islands, which are not very distant from the shore. This was introduced into Georgia 
from the Bahama Islands, where it had been introduced from a small island in the 
West-Indies, celebrated for its cotton, called Anguilla. 
In attempting the introduction into India of new kinds of cotton, it would appear 
advisable to include in the experiments every kind that could be procured from any part 
of the world, whether in their present site, affording the best or only an indifferent kind 
of cotton ; for some which do not appear so good, may find a more suitable locality in 
some parts of India. Another consideration, not less important, is to extend the 
experiments over as wide afield as circumstances will at present admit of; and it will 
be extraordinary, indeed, if the extended coasts and wide-spreading plains of the Indian 
empire do not afford a sufficient choice of soil and climate for some one, if not several, 
of the superior yarieties of a plant, which is already cultivated in every part of the 
country. 
With respect to the improvement of the kinds already in cultivation in India, it will 
not be useless to call attention to the evidence given before the Committee of the 
House of Commons on the Affairs of the East-India Company, where several places are 
mentioned, which already produce some fine kinds of cotton,—as the neighbourhood of 
the Silhet Hills, which is said by Mr. Bracken to produce a cotton equal to any from 
the South Sea Islands, and which he states that Mr. Finlay, of the Calcutta Cotton 
Mills, considered equal to any cotton he had ever seen. There is also a fine variety in 
the neighbourhood of Dacca; though the fine muslins of that name are no doubt more 
owing to the workmanship than to the raw material. Mr. Colebrooke (Bengal Husbandry, 
p- 140) states, that the best cotton imported into Bengal is brought by land from Nag- 
pore, in the Dukhun, to Mirzapore. Another kind, superior in the length and fineness 
of 
