WILD AND CULTIVATED COTTONS 



Sea Island 

 cotton. 



Barbados 

 cotton. 



Upland 

 cottons 



Egyptian 

 improved 

 cottons. 



First effort 

 at Indian 

 improve- 

 ment. 



High 



counts 



introduced plant was most likely to have been G. vitifolium. Although 

 we read, in 1664, of colonists from Barbados taking seed with them 

 to the United States ; and, according to Rivers (' Hist. Sketch South 

 Carolina '), of Governor West having been instructed to obtain 

 seed from Barbados ; also of several cotton plantations being 

 established in the United States during the sixteenth and seventeenth 

 centuries, there is no means of ascertaining which cotton was thus 

 actually conveyed from the West Indies. But we know for certain 

 that the ancestor of the green-seed cotton was indigenous in Africa, 

 certain parts of America, and the West Indies, and had been 

 cultivated in those countries for centuries. Miller's green-seed 

 cotton was an improved race of that indigenous stock. There is no 

 positive knowledge of Sea Island cotton until well into the 

 eighteenth century. The staple of greatest value with the pioneer 

 planters was doubtless a plant very similar to (if not identical with) 

 the Upland cottons of to-day. There is nothing to show that either 

 the Sea Island plant, or the necessity for it, existed much before the 

 middle of the eighteenth century. It is even now a special crop 

 that can be produced only in a very restricted area, and for which 

 there is not likely ever to arise a very much larger demand than 

 at present. It can at all events alone pay when a high price rules ; 

 extended production is, therefore, exposed to the danger of ruinous 

 reduction of price, but since only certain very special countries can 

 grow it, that danger is thus perhaps not serious. 



Cotton cultivation was systematically prosecuted in Egypt about 

 1821, and rapidly obtained a position in quality of staple second only 

 to that of the finer grades of the United States, but there are no very 

 clear indications as to the sources of the various stocks nor of the 

 subsequent stages in their development. They are, however, nearly 

 all exotic forms, chiefly G. peruvianum, G. vitifolium, G. liirsutum, 

 and G. mexicanum. 



The year 1825 witnessed ruinous speculations in cotton. From 

 1829 to 1841 the East India Company made strenuous efforts to 

 improve the Indian staple. Large sums were spent in the form of 

 awards, and ten experienced cotton-growers were procured from the 

 Southern States of America with a view to establish the cultivation 

 of New Orleans cotton. Excepting in Dharwar, failure was the only 

 result, and the subject was thus allowed to drop from the public 

 attention. 



In 1841 cotton yarns were in Manchester spun up to 450s. 



