160 



WILD AND CULTIVATED COTTONS 



Palestine 

 cottons. 



Bazac 

 cottons. 



First 

 com- 

 mercial 

 cotton. 



Carried 

 to United 

 States. 



Cotton 

 first 

 manu- 

 factured. 



and also between Jerusalem and Damascus. Camerarius (1611) 

 and Pomet ( 1694) mention raw cotton as coming from Cyprus, 

 Smyrna, &c., and cotton yarn from Damascus. The Jerusalem 

 cottons were called 'bazac.' The true bazac ought to be white, 

 fine, smooth, the best spun, and most equal. Shaw ('Travels and 

 Observations relating to Barbary and the Levant,' 1757), who gives 

 lists of plants seen by him, and describes the chief industries, makes 

 no mention of cotton. Gerarde (' Herbal,' 1597, also ed. 1636), on 

 the other hand, says the seeds had been brought from Aleppo to 

 London, and germinated, but the plants died, as they could not 

 withstand frost. 



It is, perhaps, indicative of the importance of the Levantine 

 cultivation that in 1784 a consignment of cotton from the United 

 States was refused admission into Liverpool on the ground that so 

 large a quantity could not have been produced there. Thus there 

 would seem no doubt that the field plant of the Levant was the 

 first commercial cotton of Europe. Some of the early writers on 

 the cotton cultivation of Europe have already been mentioned. 

 Don Joseph Quer (' Contin. de la Fl. Espanola ' (1784), vi., p. 502-5), 

 gives particulars of the cultivation in Valencia. Baines (' Hist. Cotton 

 Manufactures of Great Britain,' 1835) will be found to afford many 

 useful particulars regarding the early traffic in Levantine cotton. 

 At an early date (1621 A.D.), however, it was carried to the United 

 States (Virginia), and there largely cultivated, some time before the 

 discovery of the other special races (the West Indian more especially) 

 that ultimately drove it into a position of very secondary importance. 

 It was this discovery, in fact, that gave the States their supremacy, 

 and caused the area of production to move to the south and west of 

 these States. 



There can, in fact, be no doubt of the extensive cultivation of 

 G. herbaceum in the States. Thus, for example, Samuel Wilson, in 

 a description of the province of Carolina addressed to the Earl of 

 Craven in 1682, says : ' Cotton of Smyrna and Cyprus sorts grows 

 well and good ; plenty of the seed is sent hither.' 



From the practical standpoint it is essential, therefore, that a 

 clear conception be obtained of the plant which in all probability 

 was the species that first attracted the attention of European manu- 

 facturers. I need make no apology, accordingly, for elaborating and 

 expounding the special restrictions implied by the above citation of 

 publications and specimens. There would seem no doubt Linnasus 



