COTTON CULTURE. 2 



very choice variety, and was produced, as we learn, from 

 Mr. Phillips, by Colonel Yick of Yicksburg, who selected 

 year after year those plants which yielded the softest and 

 the finest cotton, sent a package to a neighboring planter 

 who cultivated the seed carefully, and sent a package of 

 his seed to Georgia, where it attained celebrity for the 

 fineness and softness of the staple. 



Some of the varieties of cotton seed were wonderfully 

 prized when first introduced, and commanded sums that 

 seem almost fabulous. For instance, the " Banana," a seed 

 that became famous about twenty years ago, at first sold 

 for a hundred dollars a bushel. It was introduced by a 

 planter in Warren Bounty, Mississippi, near Yicksburg, 

 and the production was supposed to exceed anything that 

 had before been known. It was almost identical with the 

 "Hogan" seed, and some paid ten cenfs apiece for 

 " Hogan " seeds. Yet, for some reason, probably the de- 

 terioration natural to a careless selection of seed, it was 

 not three years before " Banana " could have been bought 

 for fifty cents a bushel. The same is true of the " Masto- 

 don," which came in repute about the same time. Mr. 

 Ably, a very sensible and ingenious planter, near Yazoo 

 City, and Mr. D. F. Miller, of Concordia Parish, Louisi- 

 ana, took prizes on "Mastodon" cotton ; and as the lint in 

 this variety clings to the seed a little more firmly than the 

 others, an improvement, or a modification rather, of the 

 ordinary gin, was made to suit it. And yet, a few years 

 after, a writer in the Cultivator, from Cayuga, Mississippi, 

 speaks as follows of this famous variety : 



" If you recollect, the ' Mastodon ' was introduced some 

 four or five years since, and I remember when there was 

 not sufficient seed in the neighborhood to supply the de- 

 mand at five dollars per bushel. I am acquainted with 

 the gentleman who first planted and sold the seed in this 

 State, and it is generally believed that his profit was much 

 greater from the sale of the * Mastodon ' seed, than the 



