18 



WILD AND CULTIVATED COTTONS 



Wild and 

 cultivated 

 cottons. 



African 

 influence. 



American 

 cultiva- 

 tion. 



Levant 

 seed in the 

 U.S. 



England 

 began to 

 manufac- 

 ture. 



Indian 

 goods. 



First 

 authentic 

 American 

 cottons. 



Brazilian 



and 



Mexican. 



as also the West Indies, possessed not only a cotton industry but 

 both wild and cultivated cottons, independent of those of the Old 

 World. It is most unfortunate that no botanical specimens, no 

 drawings, no descriptions exist of the plant or plants seen by 

 Columbus and his associates. And, moreover, there is no record of 

 these plants having been conveyed to Europe, so that we know 

 nothing for certain of the species of American cottons until 

 approximately two centuries after their original discovery. In fact 

 we know more of the foreign stocks supplied to America than of the 

 influences of its indigenous plants on the modern staple. By 1563 

 the slave trade was being vigorously carried on, and it is certain 

 many African plants, and among these very possibly cottons, were 

 conveyed to America. Cotton cloth woven on the coast of Guinea 

 was, in 1590, imported into London. 



The Seventeenth Century. Vast intellectual progress was accom- 

 plished, as indicated by such names as Shakespeare, Milton, Dryden, 

 Moliere, Newton, &c. The first attempt to grow cotton in the 

 United States was in Virginia. It was not, however, until the 

 second decade of this century that systematic cultivation was 

 organised, and then from seed obtained both from the Levant and 

 the West Indies. It took nearly a hundred years from that date 

 before the plantations became of national importance, but the seat 

 of the industry gradually shifted south and west. England began 

 to be an important cotton-manufacturing country about 1635, and 

 continued to draw on the Levant for her supplies of the raw fibre. 

 Direct imports of Indian cotton goods were made by England in 

 1631, and the trade was largely participated in by the Dutch 

 East India Company. An outcry against these imports was 

 raised in England, and in 1678 a pamphlet was issued entitled 

 ' Ancient Trades Decayed and Eepaired Again,' the purport of 

 which was a defence of the English woollen manufactures. 

 Marcgraf (who died in 1644) collected and described cotton in 

 Brazil. His writings were published by Piso. He speaks of the 

 cotton seen by him having the seeds united together the condition 

 we now call kidney-cotton. The plant indicated was cultivated in 

 Europe shortly after the date named, and Zanoni furnished an 

 admirable picture of it. Hernandez (' Nov. PI. Hist.' (1651), p. 308, 

 and plate) found a cotton extremely common in Mexico, growing in 

 warm, damp, cultivated places. He does not say wild, nor does he 

 say cultivated. He gives a good plate of what is either G. vitifolium, 



