are as often defeated by passions as they are victorious over principles.

Whatever, therefore, may be the immediate or remote issue of the present struggle in the United States, there can be no question that, if the cotton manufacture of Great Britain is to be sustained in, or, more correctly speaking, restored to, the position it has hitherto occupied, the first and most pressing need is the discovery of new sources from which to obtain supplies of raw material. Whether we shall ever again have American cotton in the same abundance and at the same price as we had up to last year, is at best uncertain; and even if our doubts on this point should turn out to be unfounded, experience has shown us that even the most certain channel of import may be stopped up for a time. If it is to rest wholly with the Southern States of America to determine whether the mills of Lancashire are to work or to remain idle, it is much to be desired that cotton should cease to be the preponderating element in the national industry, and consequently the disturbing element in the national prosperity, which we have been accustomed to see it. Even the immense advantage of cheap calico may be too dearly purchased at the cost of an occasional famine. We can hardly regard the magnitude of our cotton trade as a reasonable ground for self-congratulation, unless it can be placed on a footing which may enable us to contemplate even an American war with some approach to equanimity. It must be admitted, however, that the selection of new cotton soils is not quite so simple a matter as some persons seem to think. It is easy, no doubt, to draw a line along the 40th parallel of North latitude, and another along the 30th parallel of South latitude, and call the intermediate space the cotton zone; but after all, when we have ascertained that cotton has at some time or other been grown at various places within those limits, we have not advanced very far. The requirements of the plant seem to be neither few nor simple; but our present knowledge of what they amount to is unfortunately scanty. While the art of cotton cultivation under favourable circumstances has attained a very high degree of perfection, the scientific principles on which it is based have been but little investigated, and consequently we are unable to predict with any certainty the success or failure of new experiments.

Cotton is the fibrous down surrounding and adhering to the seeds of the gossypium, a genus belonging to the natural order malvaceae (mallows). The fibres of which this down is composed vary in length from an inch to 1 of an inch; in thickness, from th of an inch tooth of an inch; and in

colour, from pure white to tawny yellow. The appearance of the plant differs greatly in different localities and climates; but under the most favourable conditions of soil and culture it is a well-grown shrub of about the height of a man, with large soft waving leaves, covered in summer with handsome cuplike flowers, varying in colour from bright yellow to dark chocolate, and in autumn with balls of down as large as guelder roses, which give to the cotton field an appearance of dazzling and almost painful whiteness. The family gossypium has never been accurately examined, and the number of species ranges, in the estimation of botanists, from five to forty. The cottons used in commerce, however, have been reduced by Dr. Royle to three-gossypium Barbadense, gossypium Indicum, and gossypium Peruvianum. Of these, gossypium Barbadense is the most important, and the most widely distributed. It is a native of Mexico, and probably of some of the West-India Islands. From Mexico it was introduced into the United States; and the Southern planters are still in the habit of occasionally renewing their seed from the original source. To this species belongs all the short-stapled cotton of America, which, under the trade names of Uplands, Orleans, Mobile, Bowed Georgia, and others, forms the great bulk of the raw material hitherto imported into this country. Whether the other great variety of American cotton, the long staple or Sea Island, also belongs to it, is uncertain. Dr. Mallett considers that it is either a distinct species or at all events a strongly marked variety. Dr. Royle, on the other hand, mentions several instances in which the long fibres and the smooth seeds which constitute its distinguishing characteristics have appeared in cotton grown from New Orleans seed. Plants grown near Calcutta from this latter seed produced, in the third generation, black seeds entirely without hairs, and long fibres; and in the Southern States, the practice of renewing the seed from Mexico is said to have been adopted in order to prevent the crop losing its productive qualities, and giving a smaller supply of longer staple. From the West Indies the gossypium Barbadense found its way to the Island of Bourbon, and from thence was introduced into India, where accordingly it is chiefly known as "Bourbon cotton." The indigenous cotton of India, however, which has hitherto answered best there, is the gossypium Indicum, a smaller plant than the former, growing from 1 to 2 feet high in temperate climates, and from 4 to 6 feet in hot countries. There are several varietics of this species, one or other of which is found throughout India, and probably also in China. Gossypium Peruvianum is a native of Brazil. It is the largest of the three species,

averaging from 10 to 15 feet in height, and, under the trade names of Pernambuco, Bahia, and Maranham, has been exported to England in considerable quantities.

Although, however, the accident of a small crop in America may, from time to time, have given a momentary stimulus to the demand for the cotton of other countries, yet for all practical purposes it is to that quarter alone that we have looked for our supplies. Eighty per cent of our whole imports has been from the cotton ports of the Southern States,-from New Orleans, Mobile, Galveston, and Apalachicola, on the Gulf of Mexico; and from Charleston and Savannah, on the Atlantic. Of these, New Orleans sends us nearly half. The Missis sippi and its tributaries,―the Tennessee, the Cumberland, the Arkansas, and the Red River,-bring down to that city the produce of Louisiana, Mississippi, Northern Alabama, Tennessee, Arkansas, and Eastern Texas. The whole amount received there in 1859 was 1,669,274 bales. Next in importance to New Orleans stands Mobile, which, by means of the rivers Alabama, Tombigbee, and Black Warrior, receives the crops of Alabama and Northern Mississippi, amounting in 1859 to 685,000 bales. South Carolina and Georgia send their produce, chiefly by railroad, to Charleston and Savannah; but a portion of the crop of the latter state, as well as some from Eastern Alabama, finds its way, by the rivers Flint and Chattahoochee, to Apalachicola, the cotton port of Florida. Central and Western Texas send their crops to Galveston.

These

The cotton lands of these states group themselves naturally into four distinct regions. The first of these consists of the numerous sandy islands extending along the coast of South Carolina, Georgia, and a small part of Florida, on which, together with a narrow strip of the adjoining mainland, is produced the famous Sea-Island cotton. islands were once inhabited by a tribe of Indians, who lived chiefly by fishing; and the soil is composed of the accumulated shells of oysters, clams, and other shell-fish, mixed with sand and decayed vegetable matter. Whether from some peculiarity in the light sandy loam thus formed, or in the salt mud with which it is liberally dressed, or from the action of the sea air, the cotton grown on this coast yields a fibre which, for length, firmness, and fineness, has never been equalled else where. The finest yarns used in the trade can only be spun from this cotton, and its price has always been more than double that of any other. But the crop is so precarious, the process of preparation so prolonged, and the average yield per acre so much smaller than that of short-stapled cotton, that its cultivation is said to be rarely profitable; and out of nearly 3,000,000

bales, the whole amount of cotton exported from the United States in 1858, only 30,000 were Sea Island. The second and least important of the cotton regions is the "pine barrens," a belt of sand from 30 to 100 miles broad, which lies between the coast and the higher lands in the interior. It is almost wholly covered with pine woods, and although at one period it produced considerable quantities of cotton, much of the cleared Îand is now exhausted. A good deal of cotton, however, is still raised, chiefly along the banks of the rivers. In wet seasons the crops are often very good, but in dry years the yield is inconsiderable. Between the pine barrens and the mountains come the "prairie lands." They overlie a cretaceous formation-the most important constituent being a soft argillaceous limestone-which sweeps round the south-western slope of the Alleghanies in Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Tennessee, and reappears on the other side of the Mississippi valley in Texas. Much of this region, especially in Alabama, was covered at the time of the first white settlement with a dense growth of cane. It had never been inhabited by the native tribes, owing to the difficulty of obtaining water. The few streams which are found there are small and muddy, and dried up half the year; and water has either to be stored in tanks or drawn from Artesian wells, of which there are often four or five on a plantation. On the prairies, and in the river bottoms of the Mississippi, with its southern tributaries, and the rivers of Texas, which constitute the fourth of the cotton regions, the great bulk of the crop of the Southern States is produced.

What knowledge we possess of the description of soil and climate, and the method of cultivation best adapted to the full development of the cotton plant, is derived from the experience of the Southern States. There all the energies of the owners of land have long been directed almost exclusively to this object; and the only attempt at a complete analysis of the soil is to be found in the record of a series of very elaborate and careful experiments carried on by Dr. Mallett, Professor of Chemistry in the University of Alabama, the publication of which is now unfortunately interrupted by the civil war. The importance of the facts established by these experiments depends in a great measure on the peculiar requirements of the cotton plant in respect of moisture. There are four distinct forms in which moisture may be supplied to growing plants: 1. The atmosphere may contain water in the form of vapour, to any extent short of the point of saturation. 2. This point may be passed, i. e. the atmosphere may be so charged with water as to precipitate it in the form of rain. 3. The soil may contain water

intimately united with it, but not so as to be perceptible to sight or touch. 4. In this case, also, the point of saturation may be passed, and the soil may contain water in a liquid form. Now while, on the one hand, cotton is emphatically a sun-plant, while it can bear great heat and prolonged drought, it stands in need, on the other hand, of a large amount of moisture. So long as water is supplied to it in the first and third of the above forms, it cannot have too much of it. The more it gets, the better it will thrive. But in the second and fourth forms, the case is quite different. Rain, if it be heavy, or if it come late in the season, is very destructive; and a wet soil is always and absolutely injurious. These facts serve to account for the proverbial fertility of a "Mississippi bottom." The evaporation from so large a body of water keeps the air constantly charged with vapour. Of the adaptation of the prairies to the cotton plant there is no such obvious explanation; and Dr. Mallett therefore selected the Alabama "cane-brake" as the theatre of his experiments. The comparisons instituted between this and other soils proved beyond a doubt, that the success which has attended the culture of cotton in the interior of the Southern States is due in great part to the extraordinary powers of absorption and retention which the soil possesses. The results of the experiments may be summed up in a sentence. Dr. Mallett found that the specimens of soil examined took more than two months to dry, and lost nearly half their bulk during the process; that they were able to contain a very large quantity of water without allowing any of it to drain off; that they parted with water very slowly, and were percolated by water very slowly; and that they absorbed a large amount of moisture from the surrounding air. It is no wonder, therefore, either that in the cane-brake, dry as it apparently is, moisture-loving plants should abound on every side, or that the cotton plant should find a congenial home. The nature of the soil secures a supply of moisture in one of the right forms, just as in the river bottoms the condition of the atmosphere secures it in another. While the seeds and fibre are ripening in the warmth and light of a noon-day sun, the roots are living on the moisture which the earth around them has stored up during the winter damp. Further experiments proved the existence of a corresponding capacity for absorbing gases, especially ammonia, and heat from the sun's rays. The action of these qualities on the growing plant is the more important from the extreme fineness of the particles of which the soil is composed. Few of these are found to measure more thanth of an inch in diameter, and stones or gravel are never met with. The roots are thus allowed a free passage in all directions.