I have for some time intended to call your attention to the
importance of attempting to grow fine cotton in Peru, but my
inability to do justice to the subject, both from my being
practically unacquainted with any mode of growing cotton and my
general want of information, has hitherto prevented me; but as I
made you a promise to that effect yesterday, I have endeavoured to
put a few suggestions on paper, and hope that if they be carefully
acted upon, some benefit may be derived from the experiments.
We have been (as you are aware) consumers of Peruvian cotton to
some extent for the last six or eight months, and from the
observations I have made on it during that time, I have no
hesitation in saying that it possesses many excellences: it is
long enough (almost too long), very sound in staple, and where
well managed of a very good colour. Its defects are coarseness and
harshness of staple, and if these could be removed I don't see
what is to prevent its rivalling the Egyptian and Sea Islands
cotton, any considerable approximation to which would very
materially enhance its value, seeing that the highest quotation
for Sea Island, was last week 30d. per lb. (2s. 6d.), whilst the
highest for Peruvian was no more than 6 1/2 d.
With the view of improving the quality of the cotton in Peru, I
would strongly recommend you to send seeds of various kinds,
packed in air-tight boxes, particularly Sea Island and Egyptian,
which 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
cotton grown upon each of them, it is more than probable they will
find that _some_ of the plants will be varieties partaking of the
character of both the parent kinds, and by selecting the best of
these and sowing them only (still apart from all other cotton),
there is little doubt that much benefit will be derived by the
persevering and skilful cultivator.
I have heard it stated that the origin of Sea Island cotton is to
be traced to something of this kind. An observing and experimental
planter, by carefully examining his cotton, and by sowing his seed
only from those plants that produced the finest and longest
staple, at last arrived at the excellent quality which is now
known by that name.
Look, again, at what has been done in Egypt by the introduction of
better varieties of cotton. There these improved varieties have by
no means had a fair chance of showing what they are capable of
becoming, inasmuch as the wretched cultivator has not the
slightest inducement to improve their quality--he gets no more per
pound for the finest and cleanest cotton than he does for the
coarsest and dirtiest, and therefore it is not very likely to
improve under his care. But with all this neglect and want of
management, we can see by what it is, what it would most probably
become in the hands of an enterprising and intelligent man who
knew that every improvement he made in its quality would be to his
own advantage. Assuming that your Peruvian friends could so far
improve the quality of their cotton as to double its value in this
market (and I don't think myself too sanguine in expecting more
than this), with very little extra labour nearly all the
additional price would be profit.
But supposing even that cross-breeding, or hybridizing, as the
horticulturists call it, does not frequently occur naturally in
cotton, it is well known that it is very easy to effect it
artificially by prematurely unfolding the petals and with fine
scissors cutting away all the stamens before impregnation takes
place. This requires to be carefully done, so as not to injure the
petals, and they will then close again of themselves, and when
they expand naturally, then impregnate the stigma of the flower
with the pollen of the kind you want to cross with. We owe many of
our finest varieties of fruits to this practice. The late Mr.
Payne Knight was very successful in raising new varieties of many
sorts of fruit in this way, and it appears to me from the
experiments I have made that the more frequently this cross-
breeding takes place, the more easy (within certain limits) is it
to extend it until cultivation has so completely changed the
character of the plant that it bears very little resemblance to
its original stock. There is nothing growing wild like our
cabbages, turnips, and cauliflowers; nor even like our carrots,
celery, and asparagus. Where are the originals of our wheat,
barley, rye, beans, and peas? Many of these appear to be so
completely transformed by cultivation that we don't know where to
look for the parent stocks from which they originated. But I am
forgetting cotton altogether, yet beg to refer to the preceding
paragraph to show how much is owing to careful cultivation, and
trust that it may not be without its use if my letter induces your
friends to make the experiments here suggested, even though their
first attempts are unsuccessful.
This letter was translated into Spanish and circulated in Peru,
but with what success I do not know. It was also published in the
"Gardener's Chronicle," and led to a reply from Dr. Royle, which
occasioned the following letter.
* * * * *
_August 14th_, 1845.