20 FLORA VITIENSIS. 
£ cleaned cotton weighed 1 oz.; thus each plant would yield 2 Ib. 3 oz. Allowing fourteen feet square for 
ee viauihan a raule hold 222 plants, yielding, at the rate of 2 Ib. 8 oz. per individual plant, 485 Ib. 
10 oz. Even fixing the price of sorts, worth more than 1s. at Manchester, as low as 6d. per pound on the 
spot, an acre would realize £12. 2s. 92d. When it is borne in mind that Fijian cotton brings forth ripe 
fruit without intermission throughout the year, but that this calculation is based solely upon the number of 
pods found at one time only, and that the pods were gathered from plants upon which no attention whatever 
had been bestowed, the result will be still more striking; double, even treble the above quantity may safely 
be caleulated upon as their annual crop. When “it 1s further remembered that Fijian cotton is not an 
annual, as it is in the United States, and all other countries, where killed by frost or too low a temperature, 
and that the plants will continue to yield for several years without requiring any other attention than keep- 
ing them free from weedy creepers and pruning them periodically, the encouragement held out to cultivators 
will be pronounced very great. 
Until the excellence of Fijian cotton had been acknowledged at Manchester, and the mercantile value of 
the different sorts been ascertained to be in 1859, 7d. to 74d., 8d., 9d., 11d., and even 12d. to 123d. per pound 
respectively, no attempt had been made to cultivate the plant. It was almost entirely left to itself, and 
perhaps only here and there disseminated by the natives, in order to furnish materials for wicks. But when 
in November, 1859, Mr. Pritchard returned from England to Fiji, with the valuation printed in the Man- 
chester ‘ Cotton Supply Reporter’ for March, 1859, he induced the most influential chiefs to give orders 
for planting it; and the Wesleyan missionaries, without any exception, zealously aided in these endeavours 
by recommending the cultivation, both personally and through the agency of their native teachers. Thus, 
eotton has been thickly spread over all the Christianized districts, and imparts to them a characteristic feature, 
oceasionally very striking in places having a mixed religious population. In Navua, for instance, that part 
of the town inhabited by Christians is full of cotton, whilst that inhabited by the heathens is destitute of it. 
To guard against misconceptions, it must be stated that cotton has as yet been cultivated by the 
natives in their peculiar style. Those who would look in the islands for broad square acres covered with 
any given produce will be disappointed. The Fijian cultivator has such an abundance of good land at his 
command, and holds such stringent notions about the fallows to be observed, that he selects patches here 
and there only, which after an annual or biennial occupation, are deserted for others cleared for the pur- 
pose. When cotton was recommended to him, he followed his old cherished system, and the isolated 
patches now beheld are the result. These patches are of various sizes, but I have not seen any containing 
more than fifty plants. In Namara, and other districts subject to Bau, isolated specimens, often as many 
as twenty, are met with on the margins of every taro, banana, and yam plantation. On the island occupied 
by Bau, the Fijian capital, Mr. Storck, my assistant, counted four hundred shrubs, growing in the streets 
and squares. ‘The number of plants thus dispersed all over Fiji must be considerable, though nobody could 
venture to give any approximate estimate of them; and their aggregate produce, if carefully collected, 
would doubtless amount to a quantity scarcely expected from such sources. Mr. Pritchard, in order to 
open the trade, pledged himself, before leaving England, to his Manchester friends, to forward 1000 Ib. of 
cleaned cotton within twelve months’ time, and he experienced no difficulty in obtaining from Kadavu, 
Nadroga, and Bau an amount exceeding that promised before the time fixed for its dispatch,—the first ever 
sent home. A demand having been established, there was a marked increase in the crops, as soon as the 
numerous young plants added to the old stock at Mr. Pritchard’s instigation began to produce their harvest. 
On leaving England in February, 1860, the Manchester Cotton Supply Association, through their able 
secretary, Mr. Haywood, furnished me with a large quantity of New Orleans and Sea Island cotton-seeds 
together with printed instructions for their cultivation. Distributing a fair share of the seeds and papers 
amongst white settlers, who, I felt persuaded, would make use of them, | myself was enabled to establish a 
small experimental cotton-plantation on the Somosomo estate of Captain Wilson, and M. Joubert, of Sydney 
in the island of Taviuni. None of the seeds of the Sea Island sort possessed any germinating power; but 
those of the New Orleans cotton were very good, and readily grew. Sown on the 9th of June, they began 
to yield ripe pods within three months, and I was thus enabled to take home a crop from the very ocd I 
brought out, though my absence from England only amounted to thirteen months altogether. This may 
truly be termed growing cotton by steam. When I paid a second visit to Somosomo, on the 18th of 
October, my plants were from four to seven feet high, full of ripe pods and flowers, which in the mornin 
were of a pale yellow, but towards evening turned pink. Koytoo a Rotuma native whom I had desired 
to look after the plantation, said that the field only required weeding once; after that the cotton-p 
tt At : : 3 ¢ n-plants 
grew so rapidly that they kept down the weeds, and he had no further trouble. 
Simultaneously, Dr. Brower, United States Vice-Consul, had succeeded in raising New Orleans cotton 
on his estate, in the island of Wakaya, twelve pods of which weighed an ounce; whilst the seeds distributed 
by me amongst various people had evidently not fallen on barren soil. Ofcourse, my plantation could only 
e a small one, but nevertheless it proved so far beneficial that it convinced those white settlers who had 
lately repaired to the group what quick returns cotton would yield, and some of them resolutely set ab ut 
establishing plantations. Shortly after my departure some of them had as many as fifteen ies feitad 
Mr, Storck, my assistant, who went from Sydney with me to the Fijis, made up his mind to romain belind 
