30 VEGETABLE SUBSTANCES. 



dried up the source of prosperity to a place, which 

 had only existed from the profitable employment 

 furnished by this branch of industry. 



Notwithstanding, however, its apparently total 

 destruction, the cultivation of cotton had been found 

 too advantageous to be altogether abandoned by 

 those persons who had formerly prospered through 

 its means ; and as soon as the opportunity was 

 offered by returning tranquillity, plantations again 

 flourished on the coast of Granada, cotton being 

 now produced in abundance and of excellent quality 

 at Motril and through the surrounding country*. 



There are many species of this plant, and their 

 number is so constantly increased by the researches 

 of botanists, that the varieties appear scarcely to 

 have any limit. Linnaeus enumerated only four 

 kinds ; Lamarck, in the Encyclopedic Methodique, 

 recognizes eight; Cavanilles, in his Sixth Dissertation 

 on the Monadelphia class of Plants, adds two other 

 species to this number; and Desfontaines, Poiret, and 

 Rceusch have each described a new species. 



Dr. Rohr, who resided during many years at the 

 island of St. Croix, where he cultivated cotton with 

 extreme care, and studied all the characteristics of 

 the plant, describes thirty-four distinct species ; but 

 to these, much to the regret of the botanical student, 

 he affixes only their popular names, and it cannot 

 therefore be ascertained in what respects they agree 

 with the different species which have been elsewhere 

 described in botanical phraseology. 



Mr. Bennet, a cotton cultivator in Tobago, who 



was an accurate and indefatigable observer of the 



plant, remarked more than a hundred varieties, and 



considered them as never ending. Of the species 



* Dictionnaire Classique d'Histoire Naturelle. 



