296 Account of a small Crop oj^ P eimsylvania Cotton, 



most abundantly ; it would be difficult for me to say pre- 

 cisely, what quantity was gathered, but I am certain it 

 exceeded a hundred pounds, forty of which I had pick- 

 ed before my departure for the south in October, and 

 sent to my plantations where I saw it ginned out. On 

 quitting my sumuier residence, I gave to the man who 

 had prepared the ground, what cotton he might pick for 

 his own use ; he assured me, the pods continued to open 

 until the end e)t' December, during which time he thinks 

 that more than sixty pounds were gathered by himself, 

 and family, a great part of which being freed from the 

 seed by the tedious process of hand picking, was worked 

 up into very fine yarn ; in addition to what \v«s gathered 

 I have reason to believe that several pounds were wasted 

 and pilfered. In the Carolinas and Virginia, three hun- 

 dred pounds of ginned cotton is an immense product to 

 the acre, but two hundred on an average, is considered 

 a fair and even a profitable crop ; indeed I believe that 

 very few planters make more. 



[In another experiment of cotton in the same year as 

 that of Dr. Tidy man's, by Mr. Gilpin of Kentmere near 

 Wilmington Delaware, and communicated to the Society, 

 it was found that *' the plants continued very flourishing, 

 and the pods to expand even after frosts, accompanied by 

 ice, with the ground considerably frozen, and a succession 

 of heavy storms and rain for one third of November^ 

 though with intervals of fine weather. '^ The cotton seed 

 planted was green, and had groun at St. Mary's Mary- 

 land; it was put in the ground by Mr. Gilpin, on the 2d of 

 May, and in September the pods began to expand. The 

 plants continued to bloom until the second of December. 



Mr. Robert Car, at the Botanic Garden, late Bartram's, 

 in Kingsess, in the same year, (1822) planted some of 

 the St. Mary's Cotton Seed, upon a square of 32 feet, 

 and obtained ten pounds of clean Cotton, which is at the- 



