1837.] Remarks on the Cultivation of Cotton. 103 



practise it accordingly. Then the plants lasted three years, now they 

 continue five or six years. How far we are indebted to my paper for 

 eliciting these facts I am not prepared to state, nor indeed is that a 

 matter of the slightest importance, so long as we get them; I have 

 therefore only to add, that it will afford me much pleasure to receive 

 many similar communications from all parts of the country, as so many 

 practical confirmations of the justness of the views I had deduced from 

 a careful consideration of broken and detached notices, met with in 

 books, or picked up in conversation. 



The opinion expressed in such forcible language respecting the ef- 

 fect of change of climate, soil and culture, in changing, not only the 

 quality of the produce, but even the variety that produces it, into ano- 

 ther, higher or lower in the scale of perfection, requires some further 

 notice, because it is a point of great practical importance, and one 

 which should be well understood. It is not, therefore, with the little 

 ambition of attempting to controvert an opinion advanced in opposition 

 to one casually expressed by myself, and which is as likely to be wrong 

 as right, but in the hope of holding out inducements to the enterprising 

 to endeavour, by carefully conducted experiments, to improve even 

 our imported varieties, and to direct attention to a mark, by which the 

 uninitiated in the mysteries of selecting cotton, may possibly be enab- 

 led to tell when his crops are deteriorating, and when a change of seed 

 has become necessary. 



Because the seed of the Uplands are covered with a green down, 

 and the fibre different from that of the Sea Island, which has a smooth 

 seed, it is the opinion of Mr. Fischer that it is next to impossi- 

 ble for the one to pass into the other, under any change of cli- 

 mate, soil and culture that can be applied; while, at the same time, 

 he expresses the opinion that the Bourbon may be deteriorated Sea 

 Island. Following Roxburgh, who supposes that the Bourbon cotton 

 is the West Indian Gossypium Barbadense, it follows that both it and 

 the Sea Island are the same species ; for the Sea Island was introduced 

 to these islands from the West Indies, hence the change to a more 

 congenial soil has raised an inferior kind in the one case to the first 

 rank, and in the second to the next place, both the Sea Island and Bour- 

 bon being superior to the average run of West Indian produce ; but in 

 the one, Sea Island, the seeds have become smooth, in the other, they 

 are covered with fur; such at least is the case with all 1 have seen. 

 Again Mr. Spalding, a careful and observant American cultivator, says, 

 " it may be remarked, however, that short stapled wool is of better 

 quality, when grown near the sea than at a distance * * * that the 

 three long stapled varieties, namely, sea-islands, maitis, and santees 

 (local denominations of the three varieties), may each be sub-divided 

 into several other varieties (sub-varieties), which are only distinguish- 



