to extend it until cultivation has so completely changed the character of the plant that it bears very little resemblance to its original stock.  There is nothing growing wild like our cabbages, turnips, and cauliflowers; nor even like our carrots, celery, and asparagus.  Where are the originals of our wheat, barley, rye, beans, and peas?  Many of these appear to be so completely transformed by cultivation that we don’t know where to look for the parent stocks from which they originated.  But I am forgetting cotton altogether, yet beg to refer to the preceding paragraph to show how much is owing to careful cultivation, and trust that it may not be without its use if my letter induces your friends to make the experiments here suggested, even though their first attempts are unsuccessful.

This letter was translated into Spanish and circulated in Peru, but with what success I do not know.  It was also published in the “Gardener’s Chronicle,” and led to a reply from Dr. Royle, which occasioned the following letter.

* * * * *

August 14th, 1845.

To the Editor of the “Gardener’s Chronicle.”

I am very glad that my letter and your remarks on the improvement of cotton in India have attracted the attention of so able a correspondent as G. F. R. (Dr. Royle), who appears to be conversant with a good deal of what has been attempted there.  No doubt there are, as he states, great diversities of soil and climate in so extensive a country as India; and if so, although there may be some which are not adapted to the growth of either the Gossypium Barbadense or the Gossypium Peruvianum, there must be both soil and climate suited to them in various localities in that country.

My chief reason for suspecting that the injury arises from the new kinds hybridizing with the indigenous cotton, is, that very good cotton has been grown from both varieties in the first generation, but when the seed from this first crop is sown again, the quality always deteriorates (at least all the gentlemen say so with whom I have conversed on this subject).  I have a sample of Indian-grown cotton of excellent quality from Pernambuco seed, worth twice as much as the best Surat cotton I ever saw; but I cannot learn that anything deserving the name of aught but a sample was ever obtained.  We hear of no increase in the quantity of this improved variety; it does not—­like cotton in the United States—­go on from ten bags to ten thousand, in eight or ten years; on the contrary, so far as I can learn, it dwindles away to nothing.  The Tinnivelly cotton brought forward as an example by your correspondent is no exception to this—­it is no more like Bourbon cotton, than Bowed cotton is like Sea Island—­at least none that I ever saw.  Bourbon is a long, silky-stapled cotton, whilst Tinnivelly has the shortness and inequality of fibre common to most of the cotton of India.  It is generally much cleaner than the cotton grown on the western side of India, but this arises from the greater care in picking it.