COTTON. 33 



careful cultivator in first forming a plantation is 

 mortified at finding an endless variety among his 

 plants, and can only hope to improve his plantation 

 by his own personal experience, at the cost of much 

 labour and many failures. 



It would be tedious and unprofitable to the general 

 reader to go into any minute particulars of all the 

 varieties of the cotton plant, and therefore the dis- 

 tinctive characters, and the points of difference of 

 those most in cultivation, will only be briefly noticed. 



The Gossypium herbaceum, or common herba- 

 ceous cotton plant, is the species most generally cul- 

 tivated. It is annual and rises scarcely to the height 

 of eighteen or twenty inches. It bears a large yellow 

 flower, with a purple centre, which produces a pod 

 about the size of a walnut. This pod when ripe 

 bursts, and exhibits to view the fleecy cotton, in 

 which the seeds are securely embedded. It is sown 

 and reaped like corn. This species is a native of 

 Persia, and is the same which is grown in Asia 

 Minor, some parts of the United States of America, 

 in Sicily, at Naples, and in Malta. 



The Gossypium arboreum, or tree cotton, is of 

 much larger growth. If left without being pruned, 

 to luxuriate to its full height, it has sometimes at- 

 tained to fifteen or twenty feet. The leaves grow 

 upon long hairy foot-stalks, and are divided into five 

 deep, spear-shaped lobes. This shrub is a native of 

 India, and probably the same as that described by 

 Marco Polo, as existing at Guzzerat. " Cotton," 

 says the Venetian traveller, " is produced here in 

 large quantities, from a tree that is about six yards 

 in height, and bears during twenty years ; but the 

 cotton taken from trees of that age is not adapted for 

 spinning, but only for quilting." 



