218 WILD AND CULTIVATED COTTONS 



be originated a greatly extended South American production. He 

 accordingly regarded it as essential to be able to recommend to 

 planters the most hopeful plants that should engage their attention. 



Fortunately Spruce (I.e. p. 67) not only furnished accurate scientific 

 descriptions, but collected good botanical specimens which were issued 

 to certain herbaria, and are thus available for botanical verification. 

 Of the present species he says, ' This is the common cotton of the 

 Equatoreal Andes, where I have seen it cultivated in sheltered spots 

 up to 8,000 feet. Humboldt, and after him Boussingault, seem to 

 have met with it at a still greater elevation. It is most extensively 

 grown in temperate valleys of the province of Imbabura, between 

 Quito and Pasto.' 



Appear- ' A patch of Imbabura cotton is readily distinguished from other 



the field kinds growing near it by the hoary appearance of the tall well-grown 

 plants, and by its showing its clear sulphur flowers and long beaked 

 pods further beyond the involucres than any other kind.' He then 

 remarks that no cotton is handsomer in the month of January, when 

 well hung with pods, just beginning to open and show the fine white 

 cotton, which has the good property of puffing up into a light mass 

 on exposure to the air, instead of remaining hard and knotty as is 

 the case with many cottons. 



' The contents of a 3-celled capsule weighed 83 grs., viz. 23 seeds 

 51 grs., cotton 32 grs., or about 38^ per cent, of gross weight.' 



These are the practical results of Spruce's study of G. peru- 

 vianum cultivation in N. Peru, but he explains that the seed used 

 had been procured from the Andes of Equador, and that the cotton 

 most cultivated around Guayaquil, and there known as Criollo or 

 Creole, is a small-seeded variety of the Imbabura. In a further 

 passage he explains that ' there had, strictly speaking, never been 

 any cultivation of cotton in North Peru nothing beyond sowing the 

 seed and gathering the crop. The methods now in use at Monte 

 Abierto and at Santa Lucia, near Amotape, are still scarcely more 

 than experiments awaiting the sanction of results.' He then 

 furnishes particulars of the methods pursued at the new plantations, 

 Irrigation, and urges the necessity of irrigation, to supply the water, in- 

 dispensable to successful production. Drought he holds to be the 

 most malign influence of all. He tells us that a Mr. Stirling had 

 described the ancient aqueducts of the Incas, by which the whole 

 valley of Chira had at one time been irrigated, and was then in 

 all probability a great cotton-growing country. He narrates the 



