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CHAPTER III. 
FIJI AS A COTTON-GROWING COUNTRY.—COTION NOT INDIGENOUS BUT NA- 
TURALIZED.—-NATIVE NAMES.—NUMBER OF SPECIES.—-AVERAGE PRODUCE 
OF THE WILD COTTON.—EXCELLENCE OF FIJIAN COTTON ACKNOWLEDGED 
AT MANCHESTER.—EFFORTS OF BRITISH CONSUL AND MISSIONARIES TO 
EXTEND ITS CULTIVATION.—THE FIRST THOUSAND POUNDS OF COTTON 
SENT HOME.—ESTABLISHMENT OF A PLANTATION AT SOMOSOMO, WAKAYA 
AND NUKUMOTO.—PROSPECTS OF COTTON-GROWING IN FIJI. 
Cotton was one of the subjects to which attention was 
principally directed by my instructions; and I have en- 
deavoured to collect every information which might 
prove useful in forming a correct estimate of the Fijis 
as a cotton-growing country. IfI understand the na- 
ture and requirements of cotton aright, the Fijis seem 
to be as if made for it. In the whole group there is 
scarcely a rod of ground that might not be cultivated, or 
has not at one time or other produced a crop of some 
kind, the soil being of an average amount of fertility, 
and in some parts rich in the extreme. Cotton re- 
quires a gently undulated surface, slopes of hills rather 
than flat land. The whole country, the deltas of the 
great rivers excepted, is a succession of hills and dales, 
covered on the weather-side with a luxuriant herbage 
or dense forest ; on the lee-side with grass and isolated 
screw-pines, more immediately available for planting. 
