THE TECHNOLOGIST. [Jan. 1, 1365. 



240 ON THE COTTON PLANT. 



get together in the time. Now the different sorts come into bloom from 

 about four months to eight from the sowing, and the fruit takes two months 

 after that to ripen. In some places the plant is scarcely adult the first 

 year at all, and certain sorts, at any rate when cultivated in England, do 

 not appear to show for flower, even in the second year, till October or 

 November, when the weak and scanty sunlight of our English autumn 

 and winter fails to keep the cotton — essentially a sun plant— in a 

 growing state, with its reproductive powers unimpaired. Again, after 

 the crop, a most valuable consideration to the cross-breeder, has been 

 secured, the plants have become shabby and exhausted, and blossom is 

 then out of the question ; when one does appear it is " like a dying 

 lady wan and pale," not like the last rose of summer, bright in its 

 decadence and fair as ever. 



In the summer time, however, but little ripe produce could be shown, 

 and plants, under experiment, were too precious for removal. I could 

 not now have produced this case of hybridised pods had I sent away my 

 plants and lost my time at that working period of the year. And so 

 November was decided upon as being upon the whole the best fixture 

 for most purposes. I look forward, as I write, with great apprehension 

 as to the appearance my collection will present, especially after their 

 transit by railway ; but, thanks to the unsurpassed horticultural skill 

 of the Garden Superintendent, I am able to show you some splendidly 

 grown specimens, in a younger state, from the Kensington department 

 of our Society. 



My present difficulty is simply this ; how to say a very great deal in 

 a very short space of time. To describe the various sorts, that is, semi- 

 nal or climatic varieties, with their ever-varying forms and their 

 apparently great but really invalid points of difference, would be taking 

 up your time to no present purpose ; suffice it to say, they are as nu- 

 merous as the kinds of wheat in our corn fields or peas in our kitchen 

 gardens. In India especially, every great geographic division, seaboard, 

 central, or peninsular, every district, nay, almost every mountain or 

 valley, cultivates its own form or variety. Could all this be told in 

 half an hour ? For the same reason I am obliged to omit the history, 

 rise, and progress of the trade and manufacture of the raw material. 



Unwillingly I pass by the lives and labours of those gifted men who, 

 starting from the simple distaff and wheel, and the rude handloom of 

 the cottage weaver, invented and improved, modelled and re-modelled, 

 the long series of mechanical contrivances, of which the crowning result 

 was that wondrous and beautiful marvel, the self-acting mule-jenny. 

 It is a romance in itself, that story of the machines. It has been told, 

 and told again, never too often, and the names of Hargreaves, Arkwright, 

 Cartwright, and Crompton, are among the " household words " of the 

 country of their birth. But our business is with the plant and its pro- 

 duce. Let us take its early history. The history of the cotton plant is 

 old, old ; so old that no man may tell when or where it was — in the dim 



