EXPERIMENTS WITH FOREIGN COTTON. 



BY 

 P. H. MELL. 



Within recent years much attention has been attracted to 

 foreign cottons, especially those of India and Egypt, because 

 of the yearly increased importation of the staple into this 

 country. It is claimed by a few experts that the fibre, in 

 some respects, is superior to the ordinary "upland" varie- 

 ties grown in the South, and that there is danger of the im- 

 portation increasing to such an extent as to seriously injure 

 the trade in American cottons. The Indian cotton is gen- 

 erally noted for its rich creamy color, its ready adaptabil- 

 ity for certain dyes and the property the thread has of 

 swelling in the process of bleaching, so that the cloth made 

 of it becomes more substantial than that manufactured from 

 the coarser grades of American cottons. These foreign 

 staples are also used in the United States for mixing with 

 the low grade American fibres to improve their color and 

 the quality of the cloth. 



Several of the Experiment Stations in the South have cul- 

 tivated some of the varieties of the cotton from India and 

 Egypt in order to compare their properties with our native 

 forms, but, so far as the knowledge of the writer goes, there 

 have been no regular systematic experiments conducted in 

 any state extending over a period of several years, except at 

 the Alabama Station. Of course nothing definite can be de- 

 termined about any foreign plant until it has become accli- 

 mated by several years careful cultivation. The experi- 

 ments at Auburn have been planned to accomplish first this 

 result. 



The first step taken in these investigations was, there- 

 fore, to acclimate the plants; secondly, to secure the best re- 

 sults possible in health of plant, maturity of fibre and the 

 yield of lint that the conditions of the soil and climate would 



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