COTTON PLANT. 
I7S 
Minor and in Natolia it has, for a length of time, 
been cultivated by the Turks, the Armenians, and 
the Greeks. Smyrna and Aleppo carry on a con- 
siderable traffic in this article, and the plains of the 
former are said to produce it in great abundance. 
It is common in the island of Cyprus, where a 
very beautiful cotton is grown that sells in Europe 
at an advanced price ; nevertheless, even here there 
are different degrees of fineness in this article, and 
each harvest has its cotton of different qualities. 
The inhabitants divide the cotton into two kinds ; 
that which grows near running streams, and that 
which is raised in dry places. The first is culti- 
vated about the villages, where there are little 
brooks or rivulets, from whence they water the 
plants. The cotton thus produced is infinitely su- 
perior in quality to that which is raised in dry 
places, without any moisture to refresh the shrubs 
except what falls from heaven. In April the in- 
habitants begin to sow the cotton-seed ; they con- 
sider this as the best time of the year: but as at 
this season a species of locust annually visits the 
island and commits great ravages, just as the young 
plants are beginning to shoot, they purposely re- 
tard the culture, that their crop may not be in- 
jured by them. A good harvest in this island will 
produce five thousand bales qf cotton ; when only 
three thousand are raised, the harvest of that year is 
considered as but indifferent. Whilst the island 
was in the possession of the Venetians, they have 
even produced as much as thirty thousand bales : 
