otton and the difficulty found in separating the wool
from the seed.

In 1758 white Siam seed was introduced into Louisiana. Du Prate says,
"This East India annual plant has been found to be much better and
whiter than what is cultivated in our colonies, which is of the Turkey
kind."

Letters from Paris to Governor Roman state that there is among the
French archives at Paris, Department of Marine and Colonies, a most
curious and instructive report on cotton in 1760. It was found to be a
very profitable crop in Louisiana, for in the year 1768 the French
planters, in a memoir to their Government, complained that the parent
Government had turned them over to the Spaniards just "at the time when
a new mine had been discovered; when the culture of cotton, improved by
experience, promises the planter a recompense of his toils, and
furnishes persons engaged in fitting out vessels with the cargoes to
load them."

In 1762 Captain Bossu, of the French marines, said: "Cotton of this
country (Louisiana) is of the species called the 'white cotton of Siam.'
It is neither so fine nor so long as the silk cotton, but it is,
however, very white and very fine."

In 1775 the Provincial Congress of South Carolina recommended the
cultivation of cotton, and in the same year a similar enactment was
passed by the Virginia Assembly, which declared that "all persons having
proper land ought to cultivate and raise a quantity of hemp, flax, and
cotton, not only for the use of their own families, but to spare to
others on moderate terms." This legislation no doubt was suggested on
account of the changed relations of the colonies with Great Britain.

In 1786 Thomas Jefferson, in a letter, says: "The four southernmost
States make a great deal of cotton. Their poor are almost entirely
clothed with it in winter and summer. In winter they wear shirts of it
and outer clothing of cotton and wool mixed. In summer their shirts are
linen, but the outer clothing cotton. The dress of the women is almost
entirely of cotton, manufactured by themselves, except the richer class,
and even many of these wear a great deal of homespun cotton. It is as
well manufactured as the calicoes of Europe."

At the convention at Annapolis in 1786 James Madison expressed the
conviction that from the experience already had "from the garden
practice in Talbot County, Maryland, and the circumstances of the same
kind abounding in Virginia, there was no reason to doubt that the