april — june, 1857.] Observations on Cotton. 125 



down, easily separated, and therefore readily cleaned by the roller ; 

 its seed was the smallest among the samples. There are other 

 kinds (indigenous to Honduras), which are fine, but covered with 

 down ; rendering them difficult to clean except by the saw process ; 

 one kind is of a grey colour ; another is red, furnishing the cream 

 coloured Cotton. 



From other quarters there were produced a sample of Sea Island, 

 as grown in Jamaica from American seed ; it was saw ginned. 

 Also a small sample of the same hand-picked, for the sake of com- 

 paring the fibres of each. Its seed is, like that of its parent, the 

 Anguilla, quite bare, and therefore easily ginned by either process. 

 It is the Sea Island, from American seed, that is now grown in 

 Egypt, and generally quoted at Id. to 9d. for saw ginned sorts ^ 

 Some of the common leafy Cotton of India, as it came to England 

 contrasted with a specimen of improved Madras sort. In order to 

 show how the leaves get intermixed with the Seed Cotton, there 

 were shown two pods, as taken from the tree, when neglected and 

 exposed to the weather. These pods were from Jamaica ; the wool 

 fine, and the seed as bare as Sea Island or Anguilla ; thus proving 

 that we have various fine qualities capable of being rendered re- 

 munerative, in our own West Indian possessions, and having all the 

 advantages of larger tropical perennial crops than can generally be 

 got in the more temperate latitudes of the American States. How 

 far it will be profitable to grow these, will depend chiefly on the 

 greater productiveness per acre, in or near the Tropics, and the 

 saving of time and hands on perennial compared with annual crops, 

 especially under a more improved system than was formerly practis- 

 ed. There is some valuable practical information in the forty- 

 seventh volume of the Transactions of this Society from a Planter 

 in Demarara ; — page 178. 



As compared with other tropical products, it must be remember- 

 ed that coffee takes from three to five years before any returns can 

 be expected ; and that the introduction of sugar making into Afri- 

 ca, would require an expensive apparatus at the outset, which 

 Cotton does not, while it returns a crop in about nine months after 

 planting. 



