the United States, &c. It came to the United States through the Bahama islands from one of the Caribbean isles, and is supposed to have originated in Persia.
Shrub Cotton (Gossypium Barbadense).
The fibre is remarkable for its length, strength, silkiness, and yellowish tinge; the seeds are black. In Santo Domingo the cotton plant, instead of being a simple bush planted from the seed each year, is a tree growing two and three years, which needs only to be trimmed and pruned to produce a large yield of the finest cotton. The cotton plant is indigenous to the tropical regions of both hemispheres; but the range of its cultivation extends north to the southern part of Europe and south to the Cape of Good Hope, and in the western hemisphere from Virginia to southern Brazil. The natural demands of the plant are for a tropical or semitropical climate that affords seven or eight months entirely free from frosts. Cotton was found by Humboldt in the Andes growing at an elevation of 9,000 ft., and in Mexico at 5,500. Royle states that it is cultivated at a height of 4,000 ft. in the Himalaya.—The seasons best adapted to the growth of cotton are a wet and warm spring, allowing the young plants to become well started and firmly set in the soil; a long hot summer, with bright days and dewy nights, and occasional showers to mature the bolls; and a long dry autumn, giving full time for gathering the crop. It has been ascertained that Indian cotton seed brought to the United States (from where it is a native to where it is an exotic) will produce a better cotton than in India, tending to longer and better staple continually. On the contrary, New Orleans seed planted in India will produce cotton the first year nearly equal to its original, but every year of reproduction from the same seed will exhibit more and more deterioration, until the product shall have assimilated to the native Indian cotton. The conditions of the two countries cause the characteristics of cotton to determine in opposite directions; hence the necessity for frequent renewals of good staple seeds in India. An analysis recently made shows that an ordinary crop of cotton removes each year from an acre of soil a little more than 26½ lbs. of chemical salts, containing a little more than 9 lbs. of potash, nearly 9 lbs. phosphoric acid, a little more than 1 lb. of sulphuric acid, 3½ lbs. of magnesia, and nearly 2 lbs. of lime. From this it appears that the soil must be strengthened by the use of fertilizers rich in phosphates and potash, and having a large amount of sulphuric acid.—The use of the fibre of the cotton plant as a material for textile fabrics does not appear to have been known to those nations of antiquity whose skill in the manufacture of fine linen and in the weaving of wool is recorded in the most ancient writings. The cloths in which the mummies of the Egyptians were enveloped exhibit only the round smooth fibre of flax, never the sharp, angular, and spirally twisted fibre peculiar to cotton, a structure which may be recognized in the rags of the stuff made of the material, and is not lost even in the pulp to which these rags are reduced for the purpose of being made into paper. The earliest notice of cotton is by Herodotus, about 450 B. C., who speaks of the trees of India bearing, as their fruit, fleeces more delicate and beautiful than those of sheep, and of the Indians using them for the manufacture of cloth. Aristobulus and Nearchus, generals of Alexander, brought back to Greece correct accounts of the cotton tree and of its product. Theophrastus also described its culture from exact information. From India, cotton cloth was gradually introduced into Greece and Rome, and before the Christian era it was used by Verres in Sicily as a covering for his tents. According to Livy, Lentulus Spinther (63 B. C.) first introduced cotton awnings in the theatre at the Apollinarian games; and Cæsar afterward covered the forum with them, as also the sacred way from his own house to the Capitoline hill, which appeared more wonderful than the gladiatorial exhibition itself. The cotton fabrics of the Hindoos have been excelled in fineness and excellence only by the productions of the most perfect machines of modern times. By them were made the fine muslins known to the ancient Greeks by the name of Γαγγητικοί, which referred to their coming from the borders of the Ganges. These were both plain and ornamental, and some were white and some beautifully dyed. The city of Calicut on the western coast, which with Surat was an ancient cotton mart for the supply of the more western nations of Asia, gave its name to the variety of the fabric known as calico. As described by Tavernier, some qualities of this were “so fine that you could hardly feel them in your hand, and the thread when spun is scarcely discernible.” He also speaks of the cloth making transparent garments, and of turbans containing 25 or 30 ells of it weighing
