Jan. 1, 1865.] THE TECHNOLOGIST. 



ON THE COTTON PLANT. 249 



Cotton, Dholerah," I raised plants with, very distinct habit and foliage, 

 with short broad elliptical, sometimes mucronate leaves and many hirsute 

 zig-zag branches. The segments of the outer calyx are much expanded, 

 so as to give them a sort of butterfly appearance. The cotton is long and 

 soft, and approaching in quality to the American staple. Here is a very 

 fine form of the Indian plant from one of Dr. Forbes "Watson's samples, 

 marked " From Nymansing, Assam," with thick dark green leaves lanceo- 

 late, and wanting the small supplementary lobes ; the nearly entire 

 bracts enclose large long pods, rivalling in size those of the American 

 plant. This sort was detected by the keen eye of the Doctor among 

 the Indian specimens sent over to the last Great Exhibition. The staple 

 appears bulky, strong, and, I believe, is very good. Seeds from the 

 same packet produced a beautiful little miniature form, with small 

 round pods. Another packet, from Assam, gave me a plant somewhat 

 like the last, but with a yellowish tint in the leaf and smaller pods. 



These comprise my Indian menagerie of cultivated kinds. And now 

 I must show you perhaps the most curious and interesting thing in my 

 whole collection, Dr. Welwitsch's wild African species. If we look 

 with Darwin back into the dim pre-historical ages and watch as it were 

 our beautifully developed forms fading back into one first created wild 

 type, I am afraid the dark lady of my dream would have had stiff work to 

 spin a thread from this. Here is the seed with the cotton on it. The 

 colour of it is Nankin. 



I must now, at the risk of wearying my audience, touch upon the 

 all-important subject of the cultivation of American staple in India ; and 

 as it will be absolutely to explain the commercial relations which the 

 Indian and American staples bear to each other, I will read part of a 

 capital speech made by Mr. Smith, once member for Stockport, which 

 gives a short and masterly explanation of the subject. It is from a 

 capital book — ' The Cotton Trade,' by George McHenry, published by 

 Saunders and Otley. It has a strong Yankee leaning, but is exhaustive of 

 the subject as a commercial history. 



" The long staple, or long-fibre cotton, is used for making the warp, 

 as it is technically called, i. e., the longitudinal threads of the woven 

 tissue. These threads, when of the finer sorts — for all numbers, say 

 above 50's — must be made of long-staple cotton ; for numbers below 50' » 

 they may be made of it, and would be so made were it as cheap as the 

 lower qualities of the raw material. No other quality of cotton is strong 

 enough or long enough either to spin into the higher and finer numbers 

 or to sustain the tension and friction to which the threads are exposed in 

 the loom. 



" The medium-staple cotton, on the contrary, is used partly for the 

 lower numbers of the warp (and as such enters largely into the produc- 

 tion of the vast quantities of 'cotton yarn ' and sewing thread exported) 

 but mainly for the weft, or transverse threads of the woven tissue. It is 

 softer and more silkier than the quality spoken of above, makes a fuller 



