308 WILD AND CULTIVATED COTTONS 



sea coast. But in Brazil, as already mentioned, cultivation would 

 appear to have receded from the coast. It is often remarked in 

 consequence that this plant requires a dry climate with moisture or 

 rain at the growing season, but not during or immediately preceding 

 harvest. 



Lost It has thus been shown that at an early date Brazilian cotton 



not only attracted much attention, but was of sufficient value for the 

 seed to be anxiously sought after and experimentally cultivated all 

 over the cotton area of the world. All this is very remarkable, since 

 for many years past Brazilian or kidney cotton has taken a very 

 subordinate position to Upland and Sea Island cottons, and does not 

 seem likely to ever again recover its lost popularity. 



Spruce (' Cult. Cot. N. Peru/ 1864, p. 70) gives the yield ascer- 

 tained from a normal 3-celled capsule as 93| grains, viz. 23 seeds, 

 weighing 58 grains ; cotton 35| grains or 38 per cent, of gross 

 weight. He then observes that rinon cotton yields a very fine silky 

 staple of fair length, but the crop is uncertain. His description 

 leaves no doubt as to the species, and his observation that it is no- 

 where in South America the common cotton of the Indians shows 

 that even in his time it had lost its popularity. 



Wild J. C. Branner (' Cotton in the Empire of Brazil/ 1885, pp. 27-32) 



gives us a statement of the present cotton cultivation in Brazil 

 written, it may be presumed, from the cultivation standpoint. In the 

 opening paragraphs of his most valuable paper he mentions the fact 

 that in most of the histories and other works on Brazil a species of 

 cotton is frequently spoken of as wild or indigenous. Thus Denis 

 ('Hist. Brazil/ p. 67) says the cotton is indigenous to Brazil. 

 Pereira de Silva speaks of cotton as one of the indigenous plants 

 which began to be cultivated soon after the discovery of the country. 

 So also Auguste de Saint-Hilaire mentions the oldest travellers as 

 having found cotton in use among the Indians along the Brazilian 

 coast. Branner (pp. 27-32) discusses the species and varieties of 

 cotton in Brazil, but in such a way as to leave considerable doubt as 

 to the botany of the forms in question. In a footnote he draws 

 attention to Burlamaqui (' Monogr. do Algodoeiro/ p. 13) where 

 mention is made of a wild cotton (' Alogodoeiro selvagem ') which 

 yields so little fibre as to be not worth cultivating. He then continues > 



Kidney ' the kind known as crioulo (inteiro, arboreo or Maranhao) has been 

 cultivated, according to Arruda da Camara, since 1796.' The dis- 

 tinguishing feature of crioulo is that the smooth black seeds cling so 



