ENTERED, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1866, by JOHN MULLALY, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York. PREFACE. THE object of this volume is to embody the principal information which we have obtained within the present century on the subject of COTTON, and present it in a convenient and available form for all who take an interest in the production of the most valuable plant on the face of the earth. The author has obtained this information from various sources. 1st. From more than fifty volumes of Reports, Journals, Magazines, Reviews, and Treatises on Natural History. 2d. From intelligent planters, educated and uneducated men residing in various parts of the South, who, for many years. have been watching the tender plant from its uprising in May to its last lingering moments in December. 3d. From direct observation in the field with the naked eye and the glass. To one and all from whom he has received information he returns his sincere thanks, and begs leave to express the hope that this volume may be a hand-book of intelligence on the subject of which it treats. The author has endeavored to present the most important matters connected with the production, distribution, and consumption of our great staple in a plain and systematic style, suited to the wants and wishes of the great army of industry occupying the country from the Atlantic to the Rio Grande. The Cotton question is one of deep and abiding importance, and it is one in which are involved the hopes and the interests of millions of the human race. Let the Almighty blast the crop growing from California to China. Think of the result! Commerce would drop the sceptre, manufacturers stand crippled, capitalists look aghast, and naked myriads cry for bread. But, if this be fancy's sketch, let us suppose another case. Let a government seek, by unjust legislation, to crush the only remaining hope of an oppressed people-to tie the hands of honest industry, to sicken the heart and madden the head of the toiling multitude-to enact the drama of Pharaoh and the land of Goshen-to restore, to its fullest `extent, the policy of the lord and master of the |