242 ON THE CULTIVATION OF COTTON IN BRITISH GUIANA. 



tarts. In order to convert this into a permanent red ink, nothing more 

 is necessary than the addition of a little gum and a weak infusion of log- 

 wood, in order to enrich and deepen the colour. A "beautiful red ink may 

 he obtained from the berry of the spinach. 



An ink perfectly black, limpid, and indelible, has yet to be discovered. 

 Nut-galls are the only really valuable ingredient in modern inks. The 

 permanence of the ink depends upon the proper quantity of gallic acid 

 extracted from the galls being used in its preparation. But galls are ex- 

 pensive, and ink-makers are apt to increase their profits by substituting log- 

 wood, which gives a large amount of colouring matter at a small cost. 



Much of the ink now used fast fades away, and this matter of perma- 

 nent ink is attracting general attention in Europe and America, especially 

 in the government offices and courts, so as to preserve legible records for 

 future generations. 



ON THE CULTIVATION OF COTTON IN BRITISH GUIANA. 



BY SIR W. H. HOLMES, 

 Special Commissioner to the Exhibitions of 1855 and 1862. 



I need not trouble the reader with any attempt at a scientific disquisi- 

 tion on the " Gossypium," as botanists call the cotton plant. Its varieties 

 are many, differing from each other in the length of the wool or staple, and 

 in the appearance of the seed. My opinion is, that much, if not everything, 

 in the production of good cotton, depends on suitable soil and climate. 

 You may plant the finest long staple black seed Sea Island cotton, but if 

 the soil and climate are not favourable, it will gradually degenerate into a 

 short-woolled green-seed variety. So that, although cotton grows all over 

 the globe, along that very extensive helt which reaches from forty degrees 

 north to forty degrees south of the equator, it hy no means follows that 

 every place within those latitudes will produce a good article. Sea air, 

 salt lands, and a combination of heat and moisture, seem absolutely reqrri- 

 site to form a good cotton-growing country. All these qualifications 

 Demerara possesses in a remarkable degree, and her cotton formerly ranked 

 only second to the Sea-island variety, and was of so rare and valuable a 

 description that it was scarcely ever spun alone, but was mixed up with the 

 inferior short staple cottons of India and other countries, to give them body 

 or length of fibre. 



As a practical account of the operations on a cotton estate may be 

 useful, and not altogether uninteresting, I will tell you how we grew it in 

 Demerara, five-and-twenty years ago. Our lands, like those of most other 

 estates in the Colony, are perfectly fiat, and about a couple of feet below 

 high water-mark of the Atlantic, by which they are bordered, and 

 against which they are of course embanked. When a new field of cotton 



