18371 



Remarks on the Cultivation of Cotton. 



101 



as my Bourbon, and the produce not so good in quality, nor so valuable 

 in price. The Sea Island, which I introduced the last three or four 

 years, has got mixed with my Bourbon — indeed I think the two are one 

 and the same kind, and that that grown (in America) is superior from 

 superior culture, soil and climate. Nothing will induce the natives to 

 take more trouble with it in this country than they can possibly help. 

 The Sea Island seed, which I introduced within the last six or eight 

 months, I am taking great pains with, and am keeping it carefully 

 separate." 



" I got your letter yesterday, on my return from Mooganoor. To 

 save your next edition of the Cotton Circular from as many errors as 

 possible, I hasten to set you right on two points wherein you err. 

 First, if I said the Georgian cotton did not answer so well with us as the 

 Bourbon, for I forget the terms I used, I did not mean in point of 

 growth, for it grows equally well, but I meant in respect to quantity of 

 produce, and value of said produce in the English market. My 

 Bourbon always sells some pence higher than all the American 

 Uplands, and the Bourbon plant, as far as I have been able to 

 judge from my experience in the interior, and the experiments 

 made by Major Sim at Madras, which were not a few, is a har- 

 dier and more productive one than the Georgian. The second point 

 is, that all my experience, and I have Georgian plants of the third gene- 

 ration, in different soils too, is adverse to your notion, that this kind of 

 cotton passes into the Sea Island kind in the course of time,* by change 

 of soil and climate. I can easily conceive that this error arose from 

 the mixing of seeds, which I know it requires great care and trouble 

 to prevent. Nor does my supposition that the Bourbon is degenerated 

 Sea Island at all support such a notion. Why, one has a black smooth 

 seed, and the other a green woolly one, and the quality of their fibres 

 is different. You may be assured the one will no more change into 

 the other, than an European to an Indian, or vice versa, by change of 

 soil and climate. 



" I do not know the Egyptian cotton ; without it is that which we did 

 not know in my garden, and which we called vine leaf cotton, from 

 something we saw one day in the Bengal Agricultural and Horticul- 

 tural Transactions. I send you a little of it in the accompanying 



* Mr. F. has misunderstood my meaning, for, iu saying that the two kinds are said 

 to be convertible under certain circumstances, I never for a moment supposed that those 

 suited to change Upland into Sea Island were to be found in Salem. On the contrary, I 

 stated that the very reverse was more likely to happen by the Sea Island deteriorating. 

 That long staple cotton should degenerate, and become short, is not at all wonderful, 

 when sown in an unfavourable soil and climate ; neither do I think the other is so in 

 opposite circumstances. We daily meet with such changes, and the whole science of 

 agriculture is founded on the susceptibility of plants to undergo thein. 



