152 COTTOX CULTURE. 



of gins, models for gin-houses, and the necessary imple- 

 ments for cultivating the crop. They remained there 

 some six years. Their experiments were constantly di- 

 rected to overcoming the various difficulties which they 

 found in the way of raising large crops. They came away 

 entirely satisfied that neither the soil nor the climate of 

 India fits it to be a producer of any considerable amount 

 of the higher grades of cotton. The unvarying division 

 of its seasons into wet and dry, and the quick transition 

 from one to the other, are ill adapted to cotton, which, for 

 its successful growth, requires a wet and warm spring, 

 allowing the young plants to become well started and 

 firmly set in the soil ; then a long hot summer with bright 

 days and dewy nights, and occasional showers, (but no vio- 

 lent storms,) to mature the bolls, and a long, dry autumn, 

 giving full time for gathering the crop. 



In Egypt, where the culture of cotton was introduced 

 about the year 1821, the climate and soil are both favor- 

 able, and the quality of Egyptian cotton compares very 

 well with that of America ; but the quantity, owing to 

 the dependence of all agricultural operations on the inun- 

 dation of the Nile, is very uncertain, the fluctuations be- 

 ing extreme and beyond calculation. 



The shores of Western Africa, and Yoruba, in the in- 

 terior, produce cotton in large quantities, but the staple is 

 too coarse and short for the manufacture of the finer fab- 

 rics. The distinguished traveler, Dr. Livingstone, has re- 

 cently furnished much information as to the capacity of 

 this region for the growth of cotton. He returned to 

 Africa in the spring of 1858, prepared to prosecute the 

 culture of the crop. Since the year 1852, Mr. Thomas 

 Clegg has been engaged in the region of Sierra Leone, 

 and, being provided with gins and other apparatus, so far 

 succeeded, that in 1858, the total amount sent to Eng- 

 land from that part of the world was nearly a hundred 

 thousand pounds. In quality, the African cotton is decid- 



