COTTON-WOOL. 



373 



ih^m with the improvement which has taken place in Appendj 

 cleanness and evenness of colour. 



4). The writer of these observations being unacquainted 

 with the interior management of the cotton plantations in 

 Pernambuco, is unable to say how far that part of the 

 change alluded to, which relates to the fineness of the 

 staple, may in any degree be owing to that invariable 

 tendency which all vegetables have to degenerate, by in- 

 attention to the essential points of frequently varying and 

 interchanging the seed and the soil : he will therefore 

 deem it sufficient merely to have hinted at the necessity 

 of these requisites being duly attended to, and confine 

 himself to such causes of the change which has taken 

 place in the general properties of this cotton as are more 

 obvious, pointing out what appears to him to be the 

 proper remedies, as he proceeds. 



5. The first and most material defect is, the state to 

 which the cotton is reduced by the new mode of cleaning. 

 Formerly (before this mode was adopted) it appeared to 

 have undergone no operation but that of hand-picking, 

 and was therefore, with the exception of being freed from 

 the seed and some part of its other imperfections, sent to 

 market in nearly the state it was gathered from the plant, 

 which is the most favourable state cotton can be in for all 

 manufacturing purposes, as the fibres will then separate 

 with the application of a very small force, and thereby 

 the process of carding (the first which it undergoes, and 

 on the perfection of which all the rest depend ) is rendered 

 not only more easy, but much more perfect; whereas, by 

 the new mode of cleaning, whatever it be, the fibres of 

 the cotton are so entangled and matted together, as to 

 produce a degree of stiffness and adhesion particularly 

 unfavourable to the operation in question. It requires 

 double the force in carding to separate the fibres, the 



effect 



