—Blandina D. Miller.
THE COTTON PLANT.
(Gossypium barbadense, L.)
Theise men ben the beste worchers of Gold, Sylver, Cottoun, Sylk and of all such things of any other, that be in the World.
—Mandeville, Travels, p. 212.
The cotton plant is undoubtedly one of the most useful plants in the entire vegetable kingdom. As with other exceedingly useful, though common things, we are so accustomed to the blessings we owe to this plant that we almost entirely lose sight of its identity and very existence.
There are a number of cotton yielding plants which belong to the genus Gossypium of the Mallow family (Malvaceæ), the same family to which the Hibiscus and garden mallows belong. The most important species are G. barbadense, which yields the noted Sea Island cotton, and G. herbaceum. Both are extensively cultivated in the United States, the latter species more than the former. Other more or less cultivated species are G. arboreum, G. religiosum and G. punctatum. The cottons are handsome plants with large, showy yellow or purple flowers. They vary from comparatively small and herbaceous to shrubby or even approaching the dimensions of trees. The seeds are borne in a three to five lobed capsule, which ruptures at maturity, thus allowing the snow-white cotton head to appear. The outer surface of the seeds is covered with slender fibers, each fiber being simply a single, greatly elongated epidermal cell. The individual fiber is flattened, twisted upon its axis, flexuous, from one to two or three inches in length. These fibers constitute the cotton of the market, which finds so many important uses in human economy. Of course primarily nature intended these fibers for the special use of the plant itself; being a means of aiding in the distribution of the seeds, and no doubt also serving as a protection against being eaten by animals, as the dense, more or less intertwined growth of insipid, tenacious fibers constitute anything but a tempting morsel. Man, by his ingenuity and skill, has been enabled to utilize this product of nature in his own behalf.
The commercial and technical uses of cotton date back to very remote antiquity. Cotton fabrics were in use in China as early as 2300 B. C. At the discovery of America, beautiful cotton fabrics were found in Brazil, Peru, Mexico and the West Indies. According to the eminent Greek historian and traveler, Herodotus, cotton clothing was quite universally worn 484 B. C. The finest cloth came from the valleys of the Ganges, and not until the close of the campaigns of Alexander the Great did the manufacture of cotton cloth become a distinctive industry in Greece. It appears that during the time of Pharaoh cotton was yet a rare article since it is recorded that this eminent ruler presented Joseph with a costly coat made of this material, as a memento of high esteem. It is also a notable fact that the Egyptian mummies are swathed in linen instead of cotton cloth. No cotton seeds have ever been found in the ancient tombs of Egypt, nor is the plant represented upon the ancient mural paintings of that country.
In the eastern continent India was no doubt the principal cotton growing country; even China obtained its principal supply from that source. Not until about the ninth century of our era was cotton extensively cultivated in China. About the second century Arabian merchants brought cotton from India and began to cultivate it in the vicinity of the Red Sea, and from thence it gradually found its way into Spain about the sixteenth century, and from Spain into Italy and Greece.
No one knows exactly when cotton began to be used and cultivated in the western continent; we know that it must have been used a long time before the discovery of America by Columbus, for reasons already given. Mexican and South American mummy cloth is found to consist largely of cotton.
COTTON.
(Gossypium barbadense.)
FROM KŒHLER’S MEDICINAL-PFLANZEN.