100 transactions of the american institute. 



Tree Cotton. 



Mr. Wm. R. Prince. — Considerable notoriety has lately being given to 

 the subject of tree cotton, gossypium arhoreum. It is a subject of much 

 regret to uie whenever I see any laudatory notice that may misdirect the 

 useful and ever willing energies of our citizens, and where their efforts 

 must prove unavailing. Such have been my sensations when perusing the 

 several exciting notices in regard to the introduction and culture of the 

 "tree cotton," urging its capabilities of acclirfiation, with a statement 

 that certain persons had the seed for sale. 



Why, sir, has the time arrived when our brains and judgment can no 

 longer serve to guide us ? Can we expect to transpose the climes of the 

 earth, or to change totally the character of the trees of the tropics and 

 inure them to northern climate? I have frequently seen this cotton tree 

 growing wild within the tropical regions, where it attains a height of about 

 30 feet; but as to its naturalization here, you could with equal success 

 grow sugar-cane, coffee, pine-apple and bananas I Why, sir, you could 

 not acclimate a tropical tree if you had an eternity for the operation. 



Of all the animals, man alone is cosmopolitan there being no less than 

 fifty types, each a distinct creation, disseminated throughout all the re- 

 gions of our globe. It is true that an annual plant such as our ordinary 

 cotton, Gossypium herhaceum may, by numerous seminal reproductions, 

 attain to such a degree of acclimation, that it will sustain our summer, 

 yet it will perish with the first frost of autumn. But how think you a 

 tropical tree or plant can ever be hardened to sustain our wintry blasts ? 



Whoever shall sell one dollar's worth of tree cotton seed, will, in fact,* 

 cause the purchaser a loss of ten dollars in a futile experiment. As such 

 erroneous impressions exist in regard to the law of acclimation, I will here 

 elucidate it. No plant or animal can ever be acclimated in the existing 

 race or species by any change of location, as such amelioration attaches 

 solel}-^ to their progeny. Seminal reproduction can alone effect such a change, 

 and then only within certain natural limits, and very gradually, through 

 succeeding generations. This harmonious arrangement results from a 

 great natural law, in accordance with which every animal and every tree 

 and plant partakes in a degree of the character of the climate and soil 

 where it is generated. What folly, then, would it be for us to look to the 

 productions of tropical climes for the hopeful parents of a hardy and 

 vigorous progeny, suitable to withstand the rigors of a northern winter? 

 Should we not rather look to the hardy and robust species of trees and 

 plants, which God and nature in their perfective wisdom have spread 

 spontaneously over the temperate zones of our globe ? The acclimation of 

 the Persian grape, Vitis vinifera (although a native of one of the tem- 

 perate zones), to its present condition in France, has been a labor of two 

 thousand years; and to render it still more hardy and robust — enough so 

 to sustain our climate (if such a result be possible) — would require another 

 thousand years of continued seminal reproductions, of the same discrimi- 

 nating character as have been so long continued in France. 



Such is the character of the gradual climatic associations which have 



