THE TECHNOLOGIST. [Apbil 1, 1865. 



420 THE INDIGENOUS VEGETATION OF 



will find his profits proportionally diminish if, after ginning, the seed 

 turn out to weigh more than he had reckoned on. 



To render intelligible these results, and others which I shall have 

 to adduce, it will be necessary to describe fully all the varieties of the 

 cotton plant whose produce I have to compare ; and it may not be 

 amiss, in the first place, to recall the more important characters belong- 

 ing to all the American species or varieties of Gossypium. 



The cotton-tree grows in the equatorial regions to 15 feet or more in 

 height, with a trunk sometimes exceeding 6 inches in diameter, ascend- 

 ing alternate branches, and soft brittle wood. In the. village of Daule, 

 near Guayaquil, there w r as, in 1861, a brown cotton-tree, supposed to be 

 fifteen years old, of which I could only just reach the lowest branches with 

 my upraised arm. Its trunk had been much gashed by wanton blows 

 from knives and cutlasses, yet the wounds seemed to heal speedily, and 

 the plant to go on growing with unabated vigour. On the river Piura, 

 just below the town, I saw, in 1863, a tree of the common white cotton, 

 whose trunk forked from a little above the ground, each fork being as 

 thick as a man's thigh. It height was not more than 12 feet, but the 

 expanse of its branches was enormous, co/ering an oval space whose 

 greatest diameter was 27 feet, and least diameter 18 feet. I suppose it 

 may still be growing there, for it was luxuriantly leafy, and produced 

 a good many pods, of small size, and containing cotton of a very short 

 staple, as is usual to old plants. Judging from these examples, and from 

 others I have seen, I conclude that a cotton-tree, if allowed to reach the 

 natural term of existence, in favourable circumstances, woidd probably 

 live twenty years. Usually, however, it is cultivated as a shrub, its 

 upward growth, beyond easy reach of the cotton-pickers, being checked 

 by breaking off the leading shoots ; and in the temperate zones it is 

 grown as an annual, either because that has been found more profitable, 

 or because it is the only possible way, where the winter cold is so great 

 as to kill the plant. It sends down a very long tap root, the Indians 

 Bay, exactly equal to the height of the tree ; and the lateral roots are 

 usually few and short.* 



* People who have seen cotton growing only as a small annual hush, or even 

 herb, are apt to he incredulous of its becoming a tree under more favourahle 

 circumstances. They require to he reminded that many plants, unavoidably 

 treated as annuals in the north temperate zone, are grown as perennials near the 

 equator. To take an instance in the potato, which, in the Andes of the depart- 

 ment of Piura, towards the towns of Ayabaca, and Huancabamba, is cultivated 

 in this way. The land having been ploughed and manured, is again ploughed 

 over, and in this state is left for a whole year ; at the end of which time they 

 plough it once more, and in the furrows drop potatoes, a vara apart, covering 

 them up with their feet. "When the tubers are rips they are scraped out as 

 required, without uprooting the plant, which thus lasts many years without being 

 renewed. 



At Ambato, in lat. 1 j D S., ripe strawberries of large size are exposed for sale 

 in the market every day in the year. They are grown on adjacent sandy slopes, 



