Identifier: reportonagricult00miss (find matches)
Title: Report on the agriculture and geology of Mississippi. Embracing a sketch of the social and natural history of the state
Year: 1854 (1850s)
Authors: Mississippi. State Geologist Wailes, Benjamin L. C. (Benjamin Leonard Covington), 1797-1862
Subjects: Geology Agriculture Natural history
Publisher: (Jackson) E. Barksdale, State Printer
Contributing Library: Smithsonian Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Smithsonian Libraries

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arieties producebolls of larger size, which open or divide into four andoccasionally into five valves or cells. The cotton plant commences flowering about the firstof June, and ceases about the first of November, whenthe plant is killed by the frost. The bolls are egg-shaped, rather under the size of theegg of the domestic fowl, pointed at the extremity, ex-panding widely when fully mature, exhibiting a browntough, woody, membranous seed-vessel, somewhat hornyin texture, to which the expanded locks of fibre or lintadhere. The culture of cotton was introduced into China aboutthe thirteenth century, and has extended largely; and theNankin variety especially, produced there, has acquireda wide notoriety, forming a distinct fabric, which is evenyet imported to some extent into the United States. In England, although among the last countries whereits manufacture was introduced, it had become wellestablished at Manchester as early as 1640. In 1719, it was suggested that the climate of South
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1 m m m M1 P m <I 3 m of AGRICULTURE. 141 Carolina was favorable for its production, and the firstProvincial Congress of that State, in 1775, recom-mended to its people to raise cotton. Georgia is said, however, to have taken the lead in itscultivation; yet the first shipment of cotton known wasin 1784, when eight bags were seized by the custom-house officers at Liverpool, it not being credited that eventhe small quantity of two thousand pounds had beenraised in the United States. Seed was introduced intoGeorgia from Jamaica and Pernambuco in 1786; but thecultivation of the Sea Island variety was not establisheduntil 1789. The Upland, or the Georgia (bowed cotton),was successfully introduced about the same time. Cotton was doubtless indigenous to America, havingbeen found growing wild in Hispaniola and other WestIndia Islands when discovered by Columbus; and at theperiod of the conquest of Mexico by Cortez, the nativesmade large webs, as delicate and fine as those ofHolland. Their

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