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 from the plants on their
estates which they see are growing the best and finest cotton, and
sow them in contact with a few seeds of each of the sorts you may
send out, carefully removing them in every instance as far as may
be practicable from the vicinity of all other cotton; and then
again sowing the seeds which are obtained from the plants thus
raised in contiguity to each other, and carefully examining the