THE TECHNOLOGIST. [Jan. 1, 1865. 



246 ON THE COTTON PLANT. 



New Orleans plant ; it has more of an herbaceous or annual habit than 

 the Upland race, conies to maturity in a few months from the seed, rests 

 for a few weeks after the effort of producing its beautiful wool, and 

 either dies if touched by frost, or shoots forth again, bearing a second, 

 and often the best crop. The flower is large and saucer-shaped, of a 

 pale yellow tint, or nearly white, wanting the puiple basal spots, with 

 cream-coloured anthers, and elliptical pod. Closely allied to this sort, 

 and indeed undistinguishable before the pod bursts, is the American 

 Nankin plant. 



The Sea Island is by no means so conspicuous an object, as far as 

 the pod of fibre is concerned, though the fibre itself is more costly and 

 showy. Its habit is different from that of the last. The whole plant is 

 more or less glabrous, the branches slenderer, and set on at a more 

 acute angle ; the blossom is golden yellow, almost tubular from the con- 

 volution of the petals, each of which has a rich brown-purple spot at the 

 base ; the pod long-oval, often much acuminated, and rough, with pit- 

 ted depressions. Like the New Orleans, this comes quickly to maturity, 

 and, like it, is often treated as an annual, though they will both live 

 several years in a winterless climate. The seed is black, clean, and free 

 from nap, except at the extremity or extremities, where there is a little 

 tuft to which the lock of cotton adheres loosely. It varies with an 

 entire covering of greenish nap, which it is said to put on, as a gentle- 

 man puts on his great coat, when taken up to the hills or into a cooler 

 cbimate. I have raised plants from both kinds of seed, and find the 

 habit reproduced in the seedlings respectively. It has been said, upon 

 the authority of cotton farmer's, that these two races interchange habit, 

 appearance, and quality with each other after cultivation for a genera- 

 tion or two, under opposite conditions respectively. 



I should feel very much obliged to any observer of the plant in its 

 own climate, if he could tell me of any authentic instance where the 

 change of appearance of seed was accompanied by a corresponding 

 alteration in the flower — whether, in short, the Sea Island plant has 

 ever put on the widely expanded, pale, self-coloured hollyhock-like 

 blossom and large smooth elliptical pod, of the New Orleans or vice 

 versa. Every monographer, or even pseudo-monographer, like myself, 

 has a conceded right to a crotchet, and mine is that there exists, or has 

 existed somewhere among the Aztecs or elsewhere, a typical Gossypium 

 Mrsutnm distinct from the smooth larladense. 



Here is Mr. Wanklyn's superb " Vine Cotton," the seeds of which 

 were kindly presented by him to our Society. The Vice-Secretary sent 

 me three, one of which grew into the plant before you. There must 

 have been some misconception in the description given to Mr. Wanklyn 

 as to its habit of rambling like a vine. The plant is simply a gigantic 

 form of New Orleans, differing only from the normal sort in a general 

 exaltation of development in all its parts. The staple, although 

 injured by the syringe, in the small propagating house here at Ken- 



