15
Native and Exotic Cotton Seed.
The nature of the cotton plant is very peculiar, and remarkably sensitive. Where it is an annual, it partakes in no small degree of the laws governing the vegetable kingdom. Similar soils and sub-soils, as shown by chemical analysis, even in^ adjoining States, rarely produce like results. Cotton grown from seed carried from any of the Atlantic Cotton States into Mississippi or Arkansas will continue to improve from like soils, whereas cotton grown from Texas seed in Georgia or South Carolina will continue, after the first crop, to deteriorate. I carried three years since from England, into Alabama and Arkansas native Egyptian and East Indian cotton seeds. They were experimented with on several plantations in both States. The first year the samples from both seeds were nothing extra, but the second year they materially improved. As a general rule, cotton-seed brought to the United States, from where it is a native to where it is an exotic, will produce a better cotton than where it is grown, the tendency being continually to a longer and better staple. On the contrary. Mobile or New Orleans seed planted in Egypt, the Levant, or East India, will produce cotton the first year nearly equal to its original, but every year of reproduction, from the same seed, will exhibit more and more deterioration; and, after the third year, the exotic is no better than the native seed. Hence the absolute necessity of frequent renewals, of good staple American seeds, where cotton is grown in Egypt and in India.
White Labour in the South.
White labour in the State of Florida is commencing to produce largely early fruits and vegetables for the Northern markets, and if ever the great staple, "Cotton," should fail to be profitable, a number of new ones could be successfully introduced from the Southern parts of Europe and Asia. But it is frequently asked by Europeans, can "white men" labour under a summer sun, in the Southern States?
I answer that "white men" do labour with remarkable success in midsummer in the Northern States, where the heat is greater and the days longer and what is to prevent them from labouring in the South, where there is less heat, and the days are shorter, and the nights of more refreshing coolness.
Out of the whole number of labourers, now employed South in the cultivation of cotton, it has been estimated that fully one-fourth part are composed of white men.
A correct examination of the "Rain Maps" presented by the Smithsonian Institution to the British Association will give no little information respecting the physical geography, climatology, and agricultural features of the United States. I therefore commend their careful study to all Europeans wishing to emigrate to America.
I should be pleased to discuss many of these points in detail, but it would not be practicable on such an occasion.
My object has been mainly to correct popular errors in reference to the "Far West," and the summer climate of the United States; and I have adhered to dry facts, and rested my statements upon the highest authorities.
We have quoted largely from them. We have attempted nothing original; statements of facts are rarely ever original.
We welcome emigrants from the civilized Christian nations of Europe to our land, in which we have a just pride, and on which, we may truly say,, have the gifts of nature been most prodigally lavished.
"Her mighty lakes, like oceans of liquid silver; her mountains with their bright aerial tints; her valleys teeming with wild fertility; her tremendous cataracts, thundering in their solitudes; her boundless plains, waving with spontaneous verdure; her broad deep rivers, rolling in solemn silence to the ocean; her trackless forests, where vegetation puts forth all its magnificence; her skies, kindling with the magic of summer clouds and glorious sunshine "—bid them welcome.
