s blowing. Most of us have blown, when children, at
the crown of white feathery matter in the dandelion, and have been
delighted to see the tiny parachutes carrying off its tiny seed to be
afterward deposited, and ultimately take root and appear as a new plant.
Much in the same way, before it was cultivated, the Cotton plant
perpetuated its own species. It should be added that the root of the
Cotton plant is tap shaped, and penetrates deeply into the earth.

It would be well nigh impossible to enumerate all the species which are
now known in the Cotton plant family, and it is not proposed here to
describe more than the principal types of the Gossypium. In a report
prepared by Mr. Tracy of Mississippi, U. S. A., no less than one
hundred and thirty varieties of American cotton are given. He says:
"The word 'variety' refers exclusively to the various forms and kinds
which are called varieties by cotton planters, and is not restricted to
the more marked and permanent types which are recognised by botanists.
Of botanical varieties there are but few, while of agricultural
varieties there are an almost infinite number, and the names under which
the agricultural varieties are known are many times greater than the
recognisable forms." The Cotton plant most readily responds to any
changes of climate, methods of cultivation, change of soil or of
fertilizers. So that it is easy to understand in a plant so susceptible
and prone to vary as is the cotton, that new species may in a few years
be brought into existence, and especially by means of proper selection
of the seed, and careful cultivation.

The chief commercial types of _Gossypium_ are--1. _Barbadense_; 2.
_Herbaceum_; 3. _Hirsutum_; 4. _Arboreum_; 5. _Neglectum_; 6.
_Peruvianum_.

_Gossypium Barbadense._--The fine long silky fibres of commerce are all
derived from this species. It is indigenous to a group of the West
Indian Islands named the Lesser Antilles. It gets its name from
Barbadoes, one of the West Indies. At the present time it is cultivated
throughout the Southern States of North America which border on the sea,
in most of the West Indian Islands, Central America, Western Africa
lying between the tropics, Bourbon, Egypt, Australia, and the East
Indies. There is no doubt that the plant comes to its highest and most
perfect state of cultivation when it is planted near the sea. Dr. Evans
says: "It may be cultivated in any region adapted to the olive and near
the sea