We have been (as you are aware) consumers of Peruvian cotton to some extent for the last six or eight months, and from the observations I have made on it during that time, I have no hesitation in saying that it possesses many excellences:  it is long enough (almost too long), very sound in staple, and where well managed of a very good colour.  Its defects are coarseness and harshness of staple, and if these could be removed I don’t see what is to prevent its rivalling the Egyptian and Sea Islands cotton, any considerable approximation to which would very materially enhance its value, seeing that the highest quotation for Sea Island, was last week 30d. per lb. (2s. 6d.), whilst the highest for Peruvian was no more than 6 1/2 d.

With the view of improving the quality of the cotton in Peru, I would strongly recommend you to send seeds of various kinds, packed in air-tight boxes, particularly Sea Island and Egyptian, which some of the cotton-brokers would easily procure from the spinners using these descriptions, and, judging from what I hear of the climate of both countries, I should think the Egyptian would go to a very similar atmosphere and mode of cultivation to that of the country where it had been raised, which would probably render it more easy to acclimatize, and, of course, make it more likely to succeed than a sort of cotton which had been grown under dissimilar circumstances of soil, climate, and mode of cultivation.

These seeds when sown, ought (with the exceptions hereafter to be mentioned) to be planted at such a distance from all other cottons as to render it very unlikely for the wind or insects to carry the pollen from the flowers of one kind to those of another; for without this precaution, such is the tendency in many genera of plants to hybridize (and I believe, from what I have heard, there is this tendency in the different varieties of cotton) or cross-breed with each other, that, however good the quality in the first instance, they would all revert to the old variety in a year or two in consequence of the great preponderance of that variety over any newly-introduced ones.  So much are the growers of turnip-seed for sale in England aware of the importance of attending to this, that the greatest precautions are taken to remove all cruciform plants from the vicinity of the field whilst their turnips are in flower, as there is such a tendency in them all to hybridize that the quality of the seed is often injured by the wild mustard (Sinapis arvensis) springing up in the same or the adjoining fields; whilst, on the other hand, by carefully selecting the best bulbs for seed, and by judiciously crossing one variety with another, new sorts are obtained, combining the excellences of both.  This leads me to observe, that probably seed of foreign varieties of cotton may not thrive well in the first instance, and I would therefore strongly recommend the gentlemen who may make the experiment carefully to select seed