Jan. 1, 1835.] THE TECHNOLOGIST. 



ON TEE COTTON PLANT. 243 



girl. Listen to her journal "July 1, 1739. — Wrote to my father to- 

 day on the pains I had taken to bring th a , indigo, ginger, and cotton to 

 perfection, and that I had greater hopes," &c. 



In 1775, just before the revolutionary war, the Southern States of 

 America had begun to turn their attention to cotton growing, and the 

 cultivation of thirty-three acres by one person of " green seed cotton," 

 probably the Xijlon americanum prcestantissimum semine virescente of the 

 old botanist Schwartz, was considered a great feat in those days. 

 After the peace in 1783, the independent spirit of the Americans was 

 directed more to their own manufactures at home, than to their exports 

 or imports, and Mr. Madison expressed his conviction that the United 

 States, in the extensive regions south of Maryland, would certainly 

 become a great cotton country. Shortly after, an American gentleman 

 came to England to purchase machinery. British law then forbade its 

 exportation ; so a Mr. Slater, who had been Arkwright's pupil, carried, 

 off the fruit of his master's brains to America, and working from recol- 

 lection, his plans and models having been seized, made the first cotton 

 machinery e^er used or seen in the United States. In 1784, eight bales 

 had been shipped to Liverpool, and seized at the Custom House as an 

 illicit importation of British colonial produce, but were restored to the 

 consignees so soon as it was discovered that so " large " a quantity of 

 cotton could be grown on the American continent. Exportations have 

 continued from that day to this. The blockade can only be con- 

 sidered as a temporary inconvenience, with a great resulting advantage. 

 It has taught the world to grow cotton. But enough of dry history ; 

 let us get to the botany. 



I must now refer you back to a remark I made, perhaps a flippant 

 one, but I am sure excusable in the case of any one who has painfull v 

 floundered through the subject as I have, " that the botany of cotton 

 was impossible." It is not alone I who have said this thing. Better 

 men have given it up in despair, quieting their consciences by lumping 

 the whole family, with its numerous and underiuable clanships, into two 

 or three specific heads, leaving even these to fight it out, like the cats 

 of Kilkenny, till nothing be left to tell the tale, and one Gossypiam, 

 genus and species, be left alone in its glory. 



All are agreed that the genus is good in law, but the specific differ- 

 ences are so slight, and the seminal variations so great, that botanists 

 have always been in a perpetual puzzle on the subject ; and what is 

 worse, they seem to have shaken up their specimens and descriptions in 

 one bag, and their names in another, put them together at random, and 

 returned them to their herbariums to puzzle posterity. Linnreus admits 

 five species ; Lamarck follows with eight ; Poiret describes four more • 

 Roxburgh adds two more, and with reason, as they would appear to be 

 stirpes, or really wild forms ; De Candolle enumerates, not insists upon, 

 thirteen, and rests upon his oars, quietly remarking that all were uncer- 

 tain, and that no genus more required the labours of a monographer, 



