THE ENCYCLOPÆDIA BRITANNICA

A DICTIONARY OF ARTS, SCIENCES, LITERATURE AND GENERAL INFORMATION

ELEVENTH EDITION

VOLUME VII SLICE V
Cosway to Coucy

Articles in This Slice

COSWAY, RICHARD (c. 1742-1821), English miniature painter, was baptized in 1742; his father was master of Blundell’s school, Tiverton, where Cosway was educated, and his uncle mayor of that town. He it was who, in conjunction with the boy’s godfather, persuaded the father to allow Richard to proceed to London before he was twelve years old, to take lessons in drawing, and undertook to support him there. On his arrival, the youthful artist won the first prize given by the newly founded Society of Arts, of the money value of five guineas. He went to Thomas Hudson for his earliest instruction, but remained with him only a few months, and then attended William Shipley’s drawing class, where he remained until he began to work on his own account in 1760. He was one of the earliest members of the Royal Academy, Associate in 1770 and Royal Academician in 1771. His success in miniature painting is said to have been started by his clever portrait of Mrs Fitzherbert, which gave great satisfaction to the prince of Wales, and brought Cosway his earliest great patron. He speedily became one of the most popular artists of the day, and his residence at Schomberg House, Pall Mall, was a well-known aristocratic rendezvous. In 1791 he removed to Stratford Place, where he lived in a state of great magnificence till 1821, when after selling most of the treasures he had accumulated he went to reside in Edgware Road. He died on the 4th of July 1821, when driving in a carriage with his friend Miss Udney. He was buried in Marylebone New church.

He married in 1781 Maria Hadfield, who survived him many years, and died in Italy in January 1838, in a school for girls which she had founded, and which she had attached to an important religious order devoted to the cause of female education, known as the Dame Inglesi. She had been created a baroness of the Empire on account of her devotion to female education by the emperor Francis I. in 1834. Her college still exists, and in it are preserved many of the things which had belonged to her and her husband.

Cosway had one child who died young. She is the subject of one of his most celebrated engravings. He painted miniatures of very many members of the royal family, and of the leading persons who formed the court of the prince regent. Perhaps his most beautiful work is his miniature of Madame du Barry, painted in 1791, when that lady was residing in Bruton Street, Berkeley Square. This portrait, together with many other splendid works by Cosway, came into the collection of Mr J. Pierpont Morgan. There are many miniatures by this artist in the royal collection at Windsor Castle, at Belvoir Castle and in other important collections. His work is of great charm and of remarkable purity, and he is certainly the most brilliant miniature painter of the 18th century.

For a full account of the artist and his wife, see Richard Cosway, R.A., by G. C. Williamson (1905).

(G. C. W.)

COTA DE MAGUAQUE, RODRIGO (d. c. 1498), Spanish poet, who flourished towards the end of the 15th century, was born at Toledo. Little is known of him save that he was of Jewish origin. The Coplas de Mingo Revulgo, the Coplas del Provincial, and the first act of the Celestina have been ascribed to him on insufficient grounds. He is undoubtedly the author of the Dialogo entre el amor y un viejo, a striking dramatic poem first printed in the Cancionero general of 1511, and of a burlesque epithalamium written in 1472 or later. He abjured Judaism about the year 1497, and is believed to have died shortly afterwards.

See “Épithalame burlesque,” edited by R. Foulché-Delbosc, in the Revue hispanique (Paris, 1894), i. 69-72; A. Bonilla y San Martín, Anales de la literatura española (Madrid, 1904), pp. 164-167.

CÔTE-D’OR, a department of eastern France, formed of the northern region of the old province of Burgundy, bounded N. by the department of Aube, N.E. by Haute-Marne, E. by Haute-Saône and Jura, S. by Saône-et-Loire, and W. by Nièvre and Yonne. Area, 3392 sq. m. Pop. (1906) 357,959. A chain of hills named the Plateau de Langres runs from north-east to south-west through the centre of the department, separating the basin of the Seine from that of the Saône, and forming a connecting-link between the Cévennes and the Vosges mountains. Extending southward from Dijon is a portion of this range which, on account of the excellence of its vineyards, bears the name of Côte-d’Or, whence that of the department. The north-west portion of the department is occupied by the calcareous and densely-wooded district of Châtillonais, the south-west by spurs of the granitic chain of Morvan, while a wide plain traversed by the Saône extends over the eastern region. The Châtillonais is watered by the Seine, which there takes its rise, and by the Ource, both fed largely by the douix or abundant springs characteristic of Burgundy. The Armançon and other affluents of the Yonne, and the Arroux, a tributary of the Loire, water the south-west.

The climate of Côte-d’Or is temperate and healthy; the rainfall is abundant west of the central range, but moderate, and, in places, scarce, in the eastern plain. Husbandry flourishes, the wealth of the department lying chiefly in its vineyards, especially those of the Côte-d’Or, which comprise the three main groups of Beaune, Nuits and Dijon, the latter the least renowned of the three. The chief cereals are wheat, oats and barley; potatoes, hops, beetroot, rape-seed, colza and a small quantity of tobacco are also produced. Sheep and cattle-raising is carried on chiefly in the western districts. The department has anthracite mines and produces freestone, lime and cement. The manufactures include iron, steel, nails, tools, machinery and other iron goods, paper, earthenware, tiles and bricks, morocco leather goods, biscuits and mustard, and there are flour-mills, distilleries, oil and vinegar works and breweries. The imports of the department are inconsiderable, coal alone being of any importance; there is an active export trade in wine, brandy, cereals and live stock and in manufactured goods. The Paris-Lyon-Méditerranée railway serves the department, its main line passing through Dijon. The canal of Burgundy, connecting the Saône with the Yonne, has a length of 94 m. in the department, while that from the Marne to the Saône has a length of 24 m.

Côte-d’Or is divided into the arrondissements of Dijon, Beaune, Châtillon and Semur, with 36 cantons and 717 communes. It forms the diocese of the bishop of Dijon, and part of the archiepiscopal province of Lyons and of the 8th military region. Dijon is the seat of the educational circumscription (académie) and court of appeal to which the department is assigned. The more noteworthy places are Dijon, the capital, Beaune, Châtillon, Semur, Auxonne, Flavigny and Cîteaux, all separately treated. St Jean de Losne, at the extremity of the Burgundy canal, is famous for its brave and successful resistance in 1636 to an immense force of Imperialists. Châteauneuf has a château of the 15th century, St Seine-l’Abbaye, a fine Gothic abbey church, and Saulieu, a Romanesque abbey church of the 11th century. The château of Bussy Rabutin (at Bussy-le-Grand), founded in the 12th century, has an interesting collection of pictures made by Roger de Rabutin, comte de Bussy, who also rebuilt the château. Montbard, the birthplace of the naturalist Buffon, has a keep of the 14th century and other remains of a castle of the dukes of Burgundy. The remarkable Renaissance chapel (1536) of Pagny-le-Château, belonging to the château destroyed in 1768, contains the tomb of Jean de Vienne (d. 1455) and that of Jean de Longwy (d. 1460) and Jeanne de Vienne (d. 1472), with alabaster effigies. At Fontenay, near Marmagne, a paper-works occupies the buildings of a well-preserved Cistercian abbey of the 12th century. At Vertault there are remains of a theatre and other buildings marking the site of the Gallo-Roman town of Vertilium.

COTES, ROGER (1682-1716), English mathematician and philosopher, was born on the 10th of July 1682 at Burbage, Leicestershire, of which place his father, the Rev. Robert Cotes, was rector. He was educated at Leicester school, and afterward at St Paul’s school, London. Proceeding to Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1699, he obtained a fellowship in 1705, and in the following year was appointed Plumian professor of astronomy and experimental philosophy in the university of Cambridge. He took orders in 1713; and the same year, at the request of Dr Richard Bentley, he published the second edition of Newton’s Principia with an original preface. He died on the 5th of June 1716, leaving unfinished a series of elaborate researches on optics, and a large amount of unpublished manuscript. He contributed two memoirs to the Philosophical Transactions, one, “Logometria,” which discusses the calculation of logarithms and certain applications of the infinitesimal calculus, the other, a “Description of the great fiery meteor seen on March 6th, 1716.” After his death his papers were collected and published by his cousin and successor in the Plumian chair, Dr Robert Smith, under the title Harmonia Mensurarum (1722). This work included the “Logometria,” the trigonometrical theorem known as “Cotes’ Theorem on the Circle” (see [Trigonometry]), his theorem on harmonic means, subsequently developed by Colin Maclaurin, and a discussion of the curves known as “Cotes’ Spirals,” which occur as the path of a particle described under the influence of a central force varying inversely as the cube of the distance. In 1738 Dr Robert Smith published Cotes’ Hydrostatical and Pneumatical Lectures, a work which was held in great estimation. The exceptional genius of Cotes earned encomiums from both his contemporaries and successors; Sir Isaac Newton said, “If Mr Cotes had lived, we should have known something.”

CÔTES-DU-NORD, a maritime department of the north-west of France, formed in 1790 from the northern part of the province of Brittany, and bounded N. by the English Channel, E. by the department of Ille-et-Vilaine, S. by Morbihan, and W. by Finistère. Pop. (1906) 611,506. Area, 2786 sq. m. In general conformation, Côtes-du-Nord is an undulating plateau including in its more southerly portion three well-marked ranges of hills. A granitic chain, the Monts du Méné, starting in the south-east of the department runs in a north-westerly direction, forming the watershed between the rivers running respectively to the Channel and the Atlantic Ocean. Towards its western extremity this chain bifurcates to form the Montagnes Noires in the south-west and the Montagne d’Arrée in the west of the department. The rivers of the Channel slope are the Rance, Arguenon, Gouessan, Gouet, Trieux, Tréguier and Léguer, while the Blavet, Meu, Oust and Aulne belong to the southern slope. Off the coast, which is steep, rocky and much indented, are the Sept-Iles, Bréhat and other small islands. The principal bays are those of St Malo and St Brieuc.

The climate is mild and not subject to extremes; in the west it is especially humid. Agriculture is more successful on the coast, where seaweed can be used as a fertilizer, than in the interior. Cereals are largely grown, wheat, oats and buck-wheat being the chief crops. Potatoes, flax, mangels, apples, plums, cherries and honey are also produced. Pasture and various kinds of forage are abundant, and there is a large output of milk and butter. The horses of the department are in repute. It produces slate, building-stone, lime and china-clay. Flour-mills, saw-mills, sardine factories, tanneries, iron-works, manufactories of polish, boat-building yards, and rope-works employ many of the inhabitants, and cloth, agricultural implements and nails are manufactured. The chief imports are coal, wood and salt. Exports include agricultural products (eggs, butter, vegetables, &c.), horses, flax and fish. The chief commercial ports are Le Légué and Paimpol; and Paimpol also equips a large fleet for the Icelandic fisheries. The coast fishing is important and large quantities of sardines are preserved. The department is served by the Ouest-État railway; its chief waterway is the canal from Nantes to Brest which traverses it for 73 m.

Côtes-du-Nord is divided into the five arrondissements of St Brieuc, Dinan, Guingamp, Lannion and Loudéac, which contain 48 cantons and 390 communes. Bas Breton is spoken in the arrondissements of Guingamp and Lannion, and in part of those of Loudéac and St Brieuc. The department belongs to the ecclesiastical province, the académie (educational division), and the appeal court of Rennes, and in the region of the X. army corps. St Brieuc, Dinan, Guingamp, Lamballe, Paimpol and Tréguier, the more noteworthy towns, are separately treated. Extensive remains of an abbey of the Premonstratensian order, dating chiefly from the 13th century, exist at Kerity; and Lehon has remains of a priory, which dates from the same period. The department is rich in interesting churches, among which those of Ploubezre (12th, 14th and 16th centuries), Perros-Guirec (12th century), Plestin-les-Grèves (16th century) and Lanleff (12th century) may be mentioned. The church of St Mathurin at Moncontour, which is a celebrated place of pilgrimage, contains fine stained glass of the 16th century, and the mural paintings of the chapel of Kermaria-an-Isquit near Plouha, which belongs to the 13th and 14th centuries, are celebrated. Near Lannion (pop. 5336), itself a picturesque old town, is the ruined castle of Tonquédec, built in the 14th century and sometimes known as “the Pierrefonds of Brittany,” owing to its resemblance to the more famous castle. At Corseul are a temple and other Roman remains.

COTGRAVE, RANDLE (?-1634), English lexicographer, came of a Cheshire family, and was educated at Cambridge, entering St John’s College in 1587. He became secretary to Lord Burghley, and in 1611 published his French-English dictionary (2nd ed., 1632), a work of real historical importance in lexicography, and still valuable in spite of such errors as were due to contemporary want of exact scholarship.

CÖTHEN, or Köthen, a town of Germany, in the duchy of Anhalt on the Ziethe, at the junction of several railway lines, 42 m. N.W. of Leipzig by rail. Pop. (1905) 22,978. It consists of an old and a new town with four suburbs. The former palace of the dukes of Anhalt-Cöthen, in the old town, has fine gardens and contains collections of pictures and coins, the famous ornithological collection of Johann Friedrich Naumann (1780-1857), and a library of some 20,000 volumes. Of the churches the Lutheran Jakobskirche (called the cathedral), a Gothic building with some fine old stained glass, is noteworthy. Besides the usual classical and modern schools (Gymnasium and Realschule) Cöthen possesses a technical institute, a school of gardening and a school of forestry. The industries include iron-founding and the manufacture of agricultural and other machinery, malt, beet-root sugar, leather, spirits, &c.; a tolerably active trade is carried on in grain, wool, potatoes and vegetables. Among others, there is a monument to Sebastian Bach, who was music director here from 1717 to 1723.

In the 10th century Cöthen was a Slav settlement, which was captured and destroyed by the German king Henry I. in 927. By the 12th century it had secured town rights and become a considerable centre of trade in agricultural produce. In 1300 it was burned by the margrave of Meissen. In 1547 the town was taken from its prince, Wolfgang (a cadet of the house of Anhalt), who had joined the league of Schmalkalden, and given by the emperor Charles V., with the rest of the prince’s possessions, to the Spanish general and painter, Felipe Ladron y Guevara (1510-1563), from whom it was, however, soon repurchased. Hahnemann, the founder of homoeopathy, lived and worked in Cöthen. From 1603 to 1847 Cöthen was the capital of the principality, later duchy, of Anhalt-Cöthen.

COTMAN, JOHN SELL (1782-1842), English landscape-painter and etcher, son of a well-to-do silk mercer, was born at Norwich on the 16th of May 1782. He showed a talent for art and was sent to London to study, where he became the friend of Turner, T. Girtin and other artists. He first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1800. In 1807 he went back to Norwich and joined the Norwich Society of Artists, of which in 1811 he became president. In 1825 he was made an associate of the Society of Painters in Water-colours; in 1834 he was appointed drawing-master at King’s College, London; and in 1836 he was elected a member of the Institute of British Architects. He died in London on the 24th of July 1842. Cotman’s work was not considered of much importance in his own day, and his pictures only procured small prices; but he now ranks as one of the great figures of the Norwich school. He was a fine draughtsman, and a remarkable painter both in oil and water-colour. One of his paintings is in the National Gallery. His fine architectural etchings, published in a series of volumes, the result of tours in Norfolk and Normandy, are valuable records of his interest in archaeology. He married early in life, and had five children, his sons, Miles Edmund (1810-1858) and Joseph John (1814-1878), both becoming landscape-painters of merit; and his younger brother Henry’s son, Frederic George Cotman (b. 1850), the water-colour artist, continued the family reputation.

COTONEASTER, a genus of the rose family (Rosaceae), containing about twenty species of shrubs and small trees, natives of Europe, North Africa and temperate Asia. C. vulgaris is native on the limestone cliffs of the Great Orme in North Wales. Several species are grown in shrubberies and borders, or as wall plants, mainly for their clusters of bright red or yellow berry-like fruits. Plants are easily raised by seeds, cuttings or layers, and grow well in ordinary soil.

COTOPAXI, a mountain of the Andes, in Ecuador, South America, 35 m. S.S.E. of Quito, remarkable as the loftiest active volcano in the world. The earliest outbursts on record took place in 1532 and 1533; and since then the eruptions have been both numerous and destructive. Among the most important are those of 1744, 1746, 1766, 1768 and 1803. In 1744 the thunderings of the volcano were heard at Honda on the Rio Magdalena, about 500 m. distant; in 1768 the quantity of ashes ejected was so great that it covered all the lesser vegetation as far as Riobamba; and in 1803 Humboldt reports that at the port of Guayaquil, 160 m. from the crater, he heard the noise day and night like continued discharges of a battery. There were considerable outbursts in 1851, 1855, 1856, 1864 and 1877. In 1802 Humboldt made a vain attempt to scale the cone, and pronounced the enterprise impossible; and the failure of Jean Baptiste Boussingault in 1831, and the double failure of M. Wagner in 1858, seemed to confirm his opinion. In 1872, however, Dr Wilhelm Reiss succeeded on the 27th and 28th of November in reaching the top; in the May of the following year the same feat was accomplished by Dr A. Stübel, and he was followed by T. Wolf in 1877, M. von Thielmann in 1878 and Edward Whymper in 1880.

Cotopaxi is frequently described as one of the most beautiful mountain masses of the world, rivalling the celebrated Fujiyama of Japan in its symmetry of outline, but overtopping it by more than 7000 ft. It is more than 15,000 ft. higher than Vesuvius, over 7000 ft. higher than Teneriffe, and nearly 2000 ft. higher than Popocatepetl. Its slope, according to Orton, is 30°, according to Wagner 29°, the north-western side being slightly steeper than the south-eastern. The apical angle is 122° 30′. The snowfall is heavier on the eastern side of the cone which is permanently covered, while the western side is usually left bare, a phenomenon occasioned by the action of the moist trade winds from the Atlantic. Its height according to Whymper is 19,613 ft., and its crater is 2300 ft. in diameter from N. to S., 1650 ft. from E. to W., and has an approximate depth of 1200 ft. It is bordered by a rim of trachytic rock, forming a black coronet above the greyish volcanic dust and sand which covers its sides to a great depth. Whymper found snow and ice under this sand. On the southern slope, at a height of 15,059 ft., is a bare cone of porphyritic andesite called El Picacho, “the beak,” or Cabeza del Inca, “the Inca’s head,” with dark cliffs rising fully 1000 ft., which according to tradition is the original summit of the volcano blown off at the first-known eruption of 1532. The summit of Cotopaxi is usually enveloped in clouds; and even in the clearest month of the year it is rarely visible for more than eight or ten days. Its eruptions produce enormous quantities of pumice, and deep layers of mud, volcanic sand and pumice surround it on the plateau. Of the air currents about and above Cotopaxi, Wagner says (Naturw. Reisen im trop. Amerika, p. 514): “On the Tacunga Plateau, at a height of 8000 Paris feet, the prevailing direction of the wind is meridional, usually from the south in the morning, and frequently from the north in the evening; but over the summit of Cotopaxi, at a height of 18,000 ft., the north-west wind always prevails throughout the day. The gradually-widening volcanic cloud continually takes a south-eastern direction over the rim of the crater; at a height, however, of about 21,000 ft. it suddenly turns to the north-west, and maintains that direction till it reaches a height of at least 28,000 ft. There are thus from the foot of the volcano to the highest level attained by its smoke-cloud three quite distinct regular currents of wind.”

COTRONE (anc. Croto, Crotona), a seaport and episcopal see on the E. coast of Calabria, Italy, in the province of Catanzaro, 37 m. E.N.E. of Catanzaro Marina by rail, 143 ft. above sea-level. Pop. (1901) town, 7917; commune, 9545. It has a castle erected by the emperor Charles V. and a small harbour, which even in ancient times was not good, but important as the only one between Taranto and Reggio. It exports a considerable quantity of oranges, olives and liquorice.

COTTA, the name of a family of German publishers, intimately connected with the history of German literature. The Cottas were of noble Italian descent, and at the time of the Reformation the family was settled in Eisenach in Thuringia.

Johann Georg Cotta (1) (1631-1692), the founder of the publishing house of J. G. Cotta, married in 1659 the widow of the university bookseller, Philipp Braun, in Tübingen, and took over the management of his business, thus establishing the firm which was subsequently associated with Cotta’s name. On his death, in 1692, the undertaking passed to his only son, Johann Georg (2); and on his death in 1712, to the latter’s eldest son, also named Johann Georg (3), while the second son, Johann Friedrich (see below), became the distinguished theologian.

Although the eldest son of Johann Georg (3), Christoph Friedrich Cotta (1730-1807), established a printing-house to the court at Stuttgart, the business languished, and it was reserved to his youngest son, Johann Friedrich, Freiherr Cotta Von Cottendorf (1764-1832), who was born at Stuttgart on the 27th of April 1764, to restore the fortunes of the firm. He attended the gymnasium of his native place, and was originally intended to study theology. He, however, entered the university of Tübingen as a student of mathematics and law, and after graduating spent a considerable time in Paris, studying French and natural science, and mixing with distinguished literary men. After practising as an advocate in one of the higher courts, Cotta, in compliance with his father’s earnest desire, took over the publishing business at Tübingen. He began in December 1787, and laboured incessantly to acquire familiarity with all the details. The house connexions rapidly extended; and, in 1794, the Allgemeine Zeitung, of which Schiller was to be editor, was planned. Schiller was compelled to withdraw on account of his health; but his friendship with Cotta deepened every year, and was a great advantage to the poet and his family. Cotta awakened in Schiller so warm an attachment that, as Heinrich Döring tells us in his life of Schiller (1824), when a bookseller offered him a higher price than Cotta for the copyright of Wallenstein, the poet firmly declined it, replying “Cotta deals honestly with me, and I with him.” In 1795 Schiller and Cotta founded the Horen, a periodical very important to the student of German literature. The poet intended, by means of this work, to infuse higher ideas into the common lives of men, by giving them a nobler human culture, and “to reunite the divided political world under the banner of truth and beauty.” The Horen brought Goethe and Schiller into intimate relations with each other and with Cotta; and Goethe, while regretting that he had already promised Wilhelm Meister to another publisher, contributed the Unterhaltung deutscher Ausgewanderten, the Roman Elegies and a paper on Literary Sansculottism. Fichte sent essays from the first, and the other brilliant German authors of the time were also represented. In 1798 the Allgemeine Zeitung appeared at Tübingen, being edited first by Posselt and then by Huber. Soon the editorial office of the newspaper was transferred to Stuttgart, in 1803 to Ulm, and in 1810 to Augsburg; it is now in Munich. In 1799 Cotta entered on his political career, being sent to Paris by the Württemberg estates as their representative. Here he made friendships which proved very advantageous for the Allgemeine Zeitung. In 1801 he paid another visit to Paris, also in a political capacity, when he carefully studied Napoleon’s policy, and treasured up many hints which were useful to him in his literary undertakings. He still, however, devoted most of his attention to his own business, and, for many years, made all the entries into the ledger with his own hand. He relieved the tedium of almost ceaseless toil by pleasant intercourse with literary men. With Schiller, Huber, and Gottlieb Konrad Pfeffel (1736-1809) he was on terms of the warmest friendship; and he was also intimate with Herder, Schelling, Fichte, Richter, Voss, Hebel, Tieck, Therese Huber, Matthisson, the brothers Humboldt, Johann Müller, Spittler and others, whose works he published in whole or in part. In the correspondence of Alexander von Humboldt with Varnhagen von Ense we see the familiar relations in which the former stood to the Cotta family. In 1795 he published the Politischen Annalen and the Jahrbücher der Baukunde, and in 1798 the Damenalmanach, along with some works of less importance. In 1807 he issued the Morgenblatt, to which Schorn’s Kunstblatt and Menzel’s Literaturblatt were afterwards added. In 1810 he removed to Stuttgart; and from that time till his death he was loaded with honours. State affairs and an honourable commission from the German booksellers took him to the Vienna congress; and in 1815 he was deputy-elect at the Württemberg diet. In 1819 he became representative of the nobility; then he succeeded to the offices of member of committee and (1824) vice-president of the Württemberg second chamber. He was also appointed Prussian Geheimrat, and knight of the order of the Württemberg crown; King William I. of Württemberg having already revived the ancient nobility in his family by granting him the patent of Freiherr (Baron) Cotta von Cottendorf. Meanwhile such publications as the Polytechnische Journal, the Hesperus, the Württembergische Jahrbücher, the Hertha, the Ausland, and the Inland issued from the press. In 1828-1829 appeared the famous correspondence between Schiller and Goethe. Cotta was an unfailing friend of young struggling men of talent. In addition to his high standing as a publisher, he was a man of great practical energy, which flowed into various fields of activity. He was a scientific agriculturist, and promoted many reforms in farming. He was the first Württemberg landholder to abolish serfdom on his estates. In politics he was throughout his life a moderate liberal. In 1824 he set up a steam printing press in Augsburg, and, about the same time, founded a literary institute at Munich. In 1825 he started steamboats, for the first time, on Lake Constance, and introduced them in the following year on the Rhine. In 1828 he was sent to Berlin, on an important commission, by Bavaria and Württemberg, and was there rewarded with orders of distinction at the hands of the three kings. He died on the 29th of December 1832 leaving a son and a daughter as coheirs.

His son, Johann Georg (4), Freiherr Cotta Von Cottendorf (1796-1863), succeeded to the management of the business on the death of his father, and was materially assisted by his sister’s husband, Freiherr Hermann von Reischach. He greatly extended the connexions of the firm by the purchase, in 1839, of the publishing business of G. J. Göschen in Leipzig, and in 1845 of that of Vogel in Landshut; while, in 1845, “Bible” branches were established at Stuttgart and Munich. He was succeeded by his younger son, Karl, and by his nephew (the son of his sister), Hermann Albert von Reischach. Under their joint partnership, the before-mentioned firms in Leipzig and Landshut, and an artistic establishment in Munich passed into other hands, leaving on the death of Hermann Albert von Reischach, in 1876, Karl von Cotta the sole representative of the firm, until his death in 1888. In 1889 the firm of J. G. Cotta passed by purchase into the hands of Adolf and Paul Kröner, who took others into partnership. In 1899 the business was converted into a limited liability company.

See Albert Schäffle, Cotta (1895); Verlags-Katalog der J. G. Cotta’schen Buchhandlung, Nachfolger (1900); and Lord Goschen’s Life and Times of G. J. Göschen (1903).

Johann Friedrich Cotta (1701-1779), the theologian, was born on the 12th of March 1701, the son of Johann Georg Cotta (2). After studying theology at Tübingen he began his public career as lecturer in Jena University. He then travelled in Germany, France and Holland, and, after residing several years in London, became professor at Tübingen in 1733. In 1736 he removed to the chair of theology in the university of Göttingen, which had been instituted as a seat of learning, two years before, by George II. of England, in his capacity as elector of Hanover. In 1739, however, he returned, as extraordinary professor of theology, to his Alma Mater, and, after successively filling the chairs of history, poetry and oratory, was appointed ordinary professor of theology in 1741. Finally he died, as chancellor of Tübingen University, on the 31st of December 1779. His learning was at once wide and accurate; his theological views were orthodox, although he did not believe in strict verbal inspiration. He was a voluminous writer. His chief works are his edition of Johann Gerhard’s Loci Theologici (1762-1777), and the Kirchenhistorie des Neuen Testaments (1768-1773).

COTTA, BERNHARD VON (1808-1879), German geologist, was born in a forester’s lodge near Eisenach, on the 24th of October 1808. He was educated at Freiberg and Heidelberg and from 1842 to 1874 he held the professorship of geology in the Bergakademie of Freiberg. Botany at first attracted him, and he was one of the earliest to use the microscope in determining the structure of fossil plants. Later on he gave his attention to practical geology, to the study of ore-deposits, of rocks and metamorphism; and he was regarded as an excellent teacher. His Rocks classified and described: a Treatise on Lithology (translated by P. H. Lawrence, 1866) was the first comprehensive work on the subject issued in the English language, and it gave great impetus to the study of rocks in Britain. He died at Freiberg on the 14th of September 1879.

Publications.—Geognostische Wanderungen (1836-1838); Grundriss der Geognosie und Geologie (1846); Geologische Briefe aus den Alpen (1850); Praktische Geologie (1852); Geologische Bilder (1852, ed. 4, 1861); Die Gesteinslehre (1855, ed. 2, 1862).

COTTA, GAIUS AURELIUS (c. 124-73 B.C.), Roman statesman and orator. In 92 he defended his uncle P. Rutilius Rufus, who had been unjustly accused of extortion in Asia. He was on intimate terms with the tribune M. Livius Drusus, who was murdered in 91, and in the same year was an unsuccessful candidate for the tribunate. Shortly afterwards he was prosecuted under the lex Varia, directed against all who had in any way supported the Italians against Rome, and, in order to avoid condemnation, went into voluntary exile. He did not return till 82, during the dictatorship of Sulla. In 75 he was consul, and excited the hostility of the optimates by carrying a law that abolished the Sullan disqualification of the tribunes from holding higher magistracies; another law de judiciis privatis, of which nothing is known, was abrogated by his brother. In 74 Cotta obtained the province of Gaul, and was granted a triumph for some victory of which we possess no details; but on the very day before its celebration an old wound broke out, and he died suddenly. According to Cicero, P. Sulpicius Rufus and Cotta were the best speakers of the young men of their time. Physically incapable of rising to passionate heights of oratory, Cotta’s successes were chiefly due to his searching investigation of facts; he kept strictly to the essentials of the case and avoided all irrelevant digressions. His style was pure and simple. He is introduced by Cicero as an interlocutor in the De oratore and De natura deorum (iii.), as a supporter of the principles of the New Academy. The fragments of Sallust contain the substance of a speech delivered by Cotta in order to calm the popular anger at a deficient corn-supply.

See Cicero, De oratore, iii. 3, Brutus, 49, 55, 90, 92; Sallust, Hist. Frag.; Appian, Bell. Civ. i. 37.

His brother, Lucius Aurelius Cotta, when praetor in 70 B.C. brought in a law for the reform of the jury lists, by which the judices were to be eligible, not from the senators exclusively as limited by Sulla, but from senators, equites and tribuni aerarii. One-third were to be senators, and two-thirds men of equestrian census, one-half of whom must have been tribuni aerarii, a body as to whose functions there is no certain evidence, although in Cicero’s time they were reckoned by courtesy amongst the equites. In 66 Cotta and L. Manlius Torquatus accused the consuls-elect for the following year of bribery in connexion with the elections; they were condemned, and Cotta and Torquatus chosen in their places. After the suppression of the Catilinarian conspiracy, Cotta proposed a public thanksgiving for Cicero’s services, and after the latter had gone into exile, supported the view that there was no need of a law for his recall, since the law of Clodius was legally worthless. He subsequently attached himself to Caesar, and it was currently reported that Cotta (who was then quindecimvir) intended to propose that Caesar should receive the title of king, it being written in the books of fate that the Parthians could only be defeated by a king. Cotta’s intention was not carried out in consequence of the murder of Caesar, after which he retired from public life.

See Cicero, Orelli’s Onomasticon; Sallust, Catiline, 18; Suetonius, Caesar, 79; Livy, Epit. 97; Vell. Pat. ii. 32; Dio Cassius xxxvi. 44, xxxvii. 1.

COTTABUS (Gr. κότταβος), a game of skill for a long time in great vogue at ancient Greek drinking parties, especially in the 4th and 5th centuries B.C. It is frequently alluded to by the classical writers of the period, and not seldom depicted on ancient vases. The object of the player was to cast a portion of wine left in his drinking cup in such a way that, without breaking bulk in its passage through the air, it should reach a certain object set up as a mark, and there produce a distinct noise by its impact. Both the wine thrown and the noise made were called λάταξ. The thrower, in the ordinary form of the game, was expected to retain the recumbent position that was usual at table, and, in flinging the cottabus, to make use of his right hand only. To succeed in the aim no small amount of dexterity was required, and unusual ability in the game was rated as high as corresponding excellence in throwing the javelin. Not only was the cottabus the ordinary accompaniment of the festal assembly, but at least in Sicily a special building of a circular form was sometimes erected so that the players might be easily arranged round the basin, and follow each other in rapid succession. Like all games in which the element of chance found a place, it was regarded as more or less ominous of the future success of the players, especially in matters of love; and the excitement was sometimes further augmented by some object of value being staked on the event.

Various modifications of the original principle of the game were gradually introduced, but for practical purposes we may reckon two varieties, (1) In the Κότταβος δἰ ὀξυβάφων shallow saucers (ὀξύβαφα) were floated in a basin or mixing-bowl filled with water; the object was to sink the saucers by throwing the wine into them, and the competitor who sank the greatest number was considered victorious, and received the prize, which consisted of cakes or sweetmeats. (2) Κότταβος κατακτός[1] is not so easy to understand, although there is little doubt as to the apparatus. This consisted of a ῥάβδος or bronze rod; a πλάστιγξ, a small disk or basin, resembling a scale-pan; a larger disk (λεκανίς); and (in most cases) a small bronze figure called μάνης. The discovery (by Professor Helbig in 1886) of two sets of actual apparatus near Perugia and various representations on vases help to elucidate the somewhat obscure accounts of the method of playing the game contained in the scholia and certain ancient authors who, it must not be forgotten, wrote at a time when the game itself had become obsolete, and cannot therefore be looked to for a trustworthy description of it.

The first specimen of the apparatus found at Perugia resembles a candelabrum on a base, tapering towards the top, with a blunt end, on which the small disk (found near the rod), which has a hole near the edge and is slightly hollow in the middle, could be balanced. At about a third of the height of the rod is a large disk with a hole in the centre through which the rod runs; in a socket at the top is a small bronze figure, with right arm and right leg uplifted. In the second specimen there is no large disk, and the figure is holding up what is apparently a rhyton or drinking-horn.

According to Prof. Helbig in Mittheilungen des deutschen archäologischen Instituts (Römische Abtheilung i., 1886) three games were played with this apparatus. In the first the smaller disk was placed on the top of the rod, and the object of the player was to dislodge it with a cast of the wine, so that it would fall with a clatter on the larger disk below. In the second (as in the third) the bronze figure was used; the smaller disk was placed above the figure, upon which it fell when hit, and thence on to the larger disk below. In the third, there was no smaller disk; the wine was thrown at the figure, and fell on to the larger disk underneath. Another supposed variety, in which two scales were balanced in such a manner that the weight of the liquid cast into either scale caused it to dip down and touch the top of an image placed under each, probably had no real existence, but is due to a confusion of the πλάστιγξ with a scale-pan by reason of its shape. The game appears to have been of Sicilian origin, but it spread through Greece from Thessaly to Rhodes, and was especially fashionable at Athens. Dionysius, Alcaeus, Anacreon, Pindar, Bacchylides, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, Antiphanes, make frequent and familiar allusion to the κότταβος; but in the writers of the Roman and Alexandrian period such reference as occurs shows that the fashion had died out. In Latin literature it is almost entirely unknown.

The most complete treatise on the subject is C. Sartori’s Das Kottabos-Spiel der alten Griechen (1893), in which a full bibliography of ancient and modern authorities is given. English readers may be referred to an article by A. Higgins on “Recent Discoveries of the Apparatus used in playing the Game of Kottabos” (Archaeologia, li. 1888); see also “Kottabos” in Daremberg and Saglio’s Dictionnaire des antiquités, and L. Becq de Fouquières, Les Jeux des anciens (1873).

[1] The epithet κατακτὀς (let down) may refer to the rod, which might be raised or lowered as required; to the lower disk, which might be moved up and down the stem; to the moving up and down of the scales, in the supposed variety of the game mentioned below.]

COTTBUS, a town of Germany, in the kingdom of Prussia, on the Spree, 72 m. S.E. of Berlin by the main railway to Görlitz, and at the intersection of the lines Halle-Sagan and Grossenhain-Frankfort-on-Oder. Pop. (1905) 46,269. It has four Protestant churches, a Roman Catholic church and a synagogue. The chief industry of the town is the manufacture of cloth, which has flourished here for centuries and now employs more than 6000 hands. Wool-spinning, cotton-spinning and the manufacture of tobacco, machinery, beer, brandy, &c., are also carried on. The town is also a considerable trading centre, and is the seat of a chamber of commerce and of a branch of the Imperial Bank (Reichsbank). In the Stadtwald, close to the town, is a women’s hospital for diseases of the lungs, a government institution in connexion with the state system of insurance against incapacity and old age. At Branitz, a neighbouring village, are the magnificent château and park of Prince Pückler-Muskau.

At one time Cottbus formed an independent lordship of the Empire, but in 1462 it passed by the treaty of Guben to Brandenburg. From 1807 to 1813 it belonged to the kingdom of Saxony.

COTTENHAM, CHARLES CHRISTOPHER PEPYS, 1st Earl of (1781-1851), lord chancellor of England, was born in London on the 29th of April 1781. He was the second son of Sir William W. Pepys, a master in chancery, who was descended from John Pepys, of Cottenham, Cambridgeshire, a great-uncle of Samuel Pepys, the diarist. Educated at Harrow and Trinity College, Cambridge, Pepys was called to the bar at Lincoln’s Inn in 1804. Practising at the chancery bar, his progress was extremely slow, and it was not till twenty-two years after his call that he was made a king’s counsel. He sat in parliament, successively, for Higham Ferrars and Malton, was appointed solicitor-general in 1834, and in the same year became master of the rolls. On the formation of Lord Melbourne’s second administration in April 1835, the great seal was for a time in commission, but eventually Pepys, who had been one of the commissioners, was appointed lord chancellor (January 1836) with the title of Baron Cottenham. He held office until the defeat of the ministry in 1841. In 1846 he again became lord chancellor in Lord John Russell’s administration. His health, however, had been gradually failing, and he resigned in 1850. Shortly before his retirement he had been created Viscount Crowhurst and earl of Cottenham. He died at Pietra Santa, in the duchy of Lucca, on the 29th of April 1851.

Both as a lawyer and as a judge, Lord Cottenham was remarkable for his mastery of the principles of equity. An indifferent speaker, he nevertheless adorned the bench by the soundness of his law and the excellence of his judgments. As a politician he was somewhat of a failure, while his only important contribution to the statute-book was the Judgments Act 1838, which amended the law for the relief of insolvent debtors.

The title of earl of Cottenham descended in turn to two of the earl’s sons, Charles Edward (1824-1863), and William John (1825-1881), and then to the latter’s son, Kenelm Charles Edward (b. 1874).

Authorities.—Campbell, Lives of the Lord Chancellors (1869); E. Foss, The Judges of England (1848-1864); E. Manson, Builders of our Law (1904); J. B. Atlay, The Victorian Chancellors (1906).

COTTER, Cottar, or Cottier, a word derived from the Latin cota, a cot or cottage, and used to describe a man who occupies a cottage and cultivates a small plot of land. This word is often employed to translate the cotarius of Domesday Book, a class whose exact status has been the subject of some discussion, and is still a matter of doubt. According to Domesday the cotarii were comparatively few, numbering less than seven thousand, and were scattered unevenly throughout England, being principally in the southern counties; they were occupied either in cultivating a small plot of land, or in working on the holdings of the villani. Like the villani, among whom they were frequently classed, their economic condition may be described as “free in relation to every one except their lord.”

See F. W. Maitland, Domesday Book and Beyond (Cambridge, 1897); and P. Vinogradoff, Villainage in England (Oxford, 1892).

COTTESWOLD HILLS, or Cotswolds, a range of hills in the western midlands of England. The greater part lies in Gloucestershire, but the system covered by the name also extends into Worcestershire, Warwickshire, Oxfordshire, Wiltshire and Somersetshire. It extends on a line from N.E. to S.W., forming a part of the great Oolitic belt extending through the English midlands. On the west the hills overlook the vales of Evesham, Gloucester and Berkeley (valleys of the Worcestershire Avon and the Severn), with a bold escarpment broken only by a few abrupt spurs, such as Bredon hill, between Tewkesbury and Evesham. On the east they slope more gently towards the basins of the upper Thames and the Bristol Avon. The watershed lies close to the western line, except where the Stroud valley, with the Frome, draining to the Severn, strikes deep into the heart of the hills. The principal valleys are those of the Windrush, Lech, Coln and Churn, feeders of the Thames, the Thames itself, and the Bristol Avon. The last, wherein lie Bath and Bristol, forms the southern boundary of the Cotteswolds; the northern is formed by the valleys of the Evenlode (draining to the Thames) and the Stour (to the Worcestershire Avon), with the low divide between them. The crest-line from Bath at the south to Meon Hill at the north measures 57 m. The breadth varies from 6 m. in the south to 28 towards the north, and the area is some 300 sq. m. The features are those of a pleasant sequestered pastoral region, rolling plateaus or wolds and bare uplands alternating with deep narrow valleys, well wooded and traversed by shallow, rapid streams. The average elevation is about 600 ft., but Cleeve Cloud above Cheltenham in the Vale of Gloucester reaches 1134 ft., and Broadway Hill, in the north, 1086 ft. These heights command splendid views over the rich vales towards the distant hills of Herefordshire and the Forest of Dean. The picturesque village of Broadway at the foot of the hill of that name is much in favour with artists.

In the soil of the hill country is so much lime that a liberal supply of manure is required. With this good crops of barley and oats are obtained, and even of wheat, if the soil is mixed with clay. But the poorest land of the hill country affords excellent pasturage for sheep, the staple commodity of the district; and the sainfoin, which grows wild, yields abundantly under cultivation. The Cotteswolds have been famous for the breed of sheep named from them since the early part of the 15th century, a breed hardy and prolific, with lambs that quickly put on fleece, and become hardened to the bracing cold of the hills, where vegetation is a month later than in the vales. Improved by judicious crossing with the Leicester sheep, the modern Cotteswold has attained high perfection of weight, shape, fleece and quality. An impulse was given to Cotteswold farming by the chartering in 1845 of the Royal Agricultural College at Cirencester.

A number of small market-towns or large villages lie on the outskirts of the hills, but in the inner parts of the district villages are few. The “capital of the Cotteswolds” is Cirencester, in the east. In the north is Chipping Campden, its great Perpendicular church and the picturesque houses of its wide street commemorating the wealth of its wool-merchants between the 14th and 17th centuries. Near this town, in the parish of Weston-sub-Edge, Robert Dover, an attorney, founded the once famous Cotteswold games early in the 17th century. Horse-racing and coursing were included with every sort of athletic exercise from quoits and skittles to wrestling, cudgels and singlestick. The games were suppressed by act of parliament in 1851.

See Proceedings of the Cotteswold Naturalists’ Field Club, passim; W. H. Hutton, By Thames and Cotswold (London, 1903).

COTTET, CHARLES (1863-  ), French painter, was born at Puy. He studied at the École des Beaux-Arts, and under Puvis de Chavannes and Roll. He travelled and painted in Egypt, Italy, and on the Lake of Geneva, but he made his name with his sombre and gloomy, firmly designed, severe and impressive scenes of life on the Brittany coast. His signal success was achieved by his painting of the triptych, “Au pays de la mer,” now at the Luxembourg museum. The Lille gallery has his “Burial in Brittany.”

COTTII REGNUM, a district in the north of Liguria, including a considerable part of the important road which led over the pass (6119 ft.) of the Alpis Cottia (Mont Genèvre) into Gaul. Whether Hannibal crossed the Alps by this route is disputed, but it was certainly in use about 100 B.C. (see [Punic Wars]). In 58 B.C. Caesar met with some resistance on crossing it, but seems afterwards to have entered into friendly relations with Donnus, the king of the district; he must have used it frequently, and refers to it as the shortest route. Donnus’s son Cottius erected the triumphal arch at his capital Segusio, the modern Susa, in honour of Augustus. Under Nero, after the death of the last Cottius, it became a province under the title of “Alpes Cottiae,” being governed by a procurator Augusti, though it still kept its old name also.

COTTIN, MARIE [called Sophie] (1770-1807), French novelist, née Risteau (not Ristaud), was born in Paris in 1770. At seventeen she married a Bordeaux banker, who died three years after, when she retired to a house in the country at Champlan, where she spent the rest of her life. In 1799 she published anonymously her Claire d’Albe. Malvina (1801) was also anonymous; but the success of Amélie Mansfield (1803) induced her to reveal her identity. In 1805 appeared Mathilde, an extravagant crusading story, and in 1806 she produced her last tale, the famous Élisabeth, ou les exilés de Sibérie, the subject of which was treated later with an admirable simplicity by Xavier de Maistre. Sainte-Beuve asserted that she committed suicide on account of an unfortunate attachment. This story is, however, unauthenticated. She died at Champlan (Seine et Oise) on the 25th of April 1807.

A complete edition of her works, with a notice by A. Petitot, was published, in five volumes, in 1817.

COTTINGTON, FRANCIS COTTINGTON, Baron (1578-1652), English lord treasurer and ambassador, was the fourth son of Philip Cottington of Godmonston in Somersetshire. According to Hoare, his mother was Jane, daughter of Thomas Biflete, but according to Clarendon “a Stafford nearly allied to Sir Edward Stafford,” through whom he was recommended to Sir Charles Cornwallis, ambassador to Spain, becoming a member of his suite and acting as English agent on the latter’s recall, from 1609 to 1611. In 1612 he was appointed English consul at Seville. Returning to England, he was made a clerk of the council in September 1613. His Spanish experience rendered him useful to the king, and his bias in favour of Spain was always marked. He seems to have promoted the Spanish policy from the first, and pressed on Gondomar, the Spanish ambassador, the proposal for the Spanish in opposition to the French marriage for Prince Charles. He was a Roman Catholic at least at heart, becoming a member of that communion in 1623, returning to Protestantism, and again declaring himself a Roman Catholic in 1636, and supporting the cause of the Roman Catholics in England. In 1616 he went as ambassador to Spain, making in 1618 James’s proposal of mediation in the dispute with the elector palatine. After his return he was appointed secretary to the prince of Wales in October 1622, and was knighted and made a baronet in 1623. He strongly disapproved of the prince’s expedition to Spain, as an adventure likely to upset the whole policy of marriage and alliance, but was overruled and chosen to accompany him. His opposition greatly incensed Buckingham, and still more his perseverance in the Spanish policy after the failure of the expedition, and on Charles’s accession Cottington was through his means dismissed from all his employments and forbidden to appear at court. The duke’s assassination, however, enabled him to return. On the 12th of November 1628 he was made a privy councillor, and in March 1629 appointed chancellor of the exchequer. In the autumn he was again sent ambassador to Spain; he signed the treaty of peace of the 5th of November 1630, and subsequently a secret agreement arranging for the partition of Holland between Spain and England in return for the restoration of the Palatinate. On the 10th of July 1631 he was created Baron Cottington of Hanworth in Middlesex.

In March 1635 he was appointed master of the court of wards, and his exactions in this office were a principal cause of the unpopularity of the government. He was also appointed a commissioner for the treasury, together with Laud. Between Cottington and the latter there sprang up a fierce rivalry. In these personal encounters Cottington had nearly always the advantage, for he practised great reserve and possessed great powers of self-command, an extraordinary talent for dissembling and a fund of humour. Laud completely lacked these qualities, and though really possessing much greater influence with Charles, he was often embarrassed and sometimes exposed to ridicule by his opponent. The aim of Cottington’s ambition was the place of lord treasurer, but Laud finally triumphed and secured it for his own nominee, Bishop Juxon, when Cottington became “no more a leader but meddled with his particular duties only.”[1] He continued, however, to take a large share in public business and served on the committees for foreign, Irish and Scottish affairs. In the last, appointed in July 1638, he supported the war, and in May 1640, after the dismissal of the Short Parliament, he declared it his opinion that at such a crisis the king might levy money without the Parliament. His attempts to get funds from the city were unsuccessful, and he had recourse instead to a speculation in pepper. He had been appointed constable of the Tower, and he now prepared the fortress for a siege. In the trial of Strafford in 1641 Cottington denied on oath that he had heard him use the incriminating words about “reducing this kingdom.” When the parliamentary opposition became too strong to be any longer defied, Cottington, as one of those who had chiefly incurred their hostility, hastened to retire from the administration, giving up the court of wards in May 1641 and the chancellorship of the exchequer in January 1642. He rejoined the king in 1643, took part in the proceedings of the Oxford parliament, and was made lord treasurer on the 3rd of October 1643. He signed the surrender of Oxford in July 1646, and being excepted from the indemnity retired abroad. He joined Prince Charles at the Hague in 1648, and became one of his counsellors. In 1649, together with Hyde, Cottington went on a mission to Spain to obtain help for the royal cause, having an interview with Mazarin at Paris on the way. They met, however, with an extremely ill reception, and Cottington found he had completely lost his popularity at the Spanish court, one cause being his shortcomings and waverings in the matter of religion. He now announced his intention of remaining in Spain and of keeping faithful to Roman Catholicism, and took up his residence at Valladolid, where he was maintained by the Jesuits. He died there on the 19th of June 1652, his body being subsequently buried in Westminster Abbey. He had amassed a large fortune and built two magnificent houses at Hanworth and Founthill. Cottington was evidently a man of considerable ability, but the foreign policy pursued by him was opposed to the national interests and futile in itself. According to Clarendon’s verdict “he left behind him a greater esteem of his parts than love of his person.” He married in 1623 Anne, daughter of Sir William Meredith and widow of Sir Robert Brett. All his children predeceased him, and his title became extinct at his death.

Bibliography.—Article in the Dict. of Nat. Biography and authorities there quoted; Clarendon’s Hist. of the Rebellion, passim, and esp. xiii. 30 (his character), and xii., xiii. (account of the Spanish mission in 1649); Clarendon’s State Papers and Life; Strafford’s Letters; Gardiner’s Hist. of England and of the Commonwealth; Hoare’s Wiltshire; Laud’s Works, vols, iii.-vii.; Winwood’s Memorials: A Refutation of a False and Impious Aspersion cast on the late Lord Cottington; Dart, Westmonasterium, i. 181 (epitaph and monument).

(P. C. Y.)

[1] Strafford’s Letters, ii. 52.

COTTON, the name of a well-known family of Anglo-Indian administrators, of whom the following are the most notable.

Sir Arthur Thomas Cotton (1803-1899), English engineer, tenth son of Henry Calveley Cotton, was born on the 15th of May 1803, and was educated at Addiscombe. He entered the Madras engineers in 1819, served in the first Burmese war (1824-26), and in 1828 began his life-work on the irrigation works of southern India. He constructed works on the Cauvery, Coleroon, Godavari and Kistna rivers, making anicuts (dams) on the Coleroon (1836-1838) for the irrigation of the Tanjore, Trichinopoly and South Arcot districts; and on the Godivari (1847-1852) for the irrigation of the Godavari district. He also projected the anicut on the Kistna (Krishna), which was carried out by other officers. Before the beginning of his work Tanjore and the adjoining districts were threatened with ruin from lack of water; on its completion they became the richest part of Madras, and Tanjore returned the largest revenue of any district in India. He was the founder of the school of Indian hydraulic engineering, and carried out much of his work in the face of opposition and discouragement from the Madras government; though, in the minute of the 15th of May 1858, that government paid an ample tribute to the genius of Cotton’s “master mind.” He was knighted in 1861. Sir Arthur Cotton believed in the possibility of constructing a complete system of irrigation and navigation canals throughout India, and devoted the whole of a long life to the partial realization of this project. He died on the 24th of July 1899.

See Lady Hope, General Sir Arthur Cotton (1900).

Sir Henry John Stedman Cotton (1845-  ), Anglo-Indian administrator, son of J. J. Cotton of the Madras Civil Service, was born on the 13th of September 1845, and was educated at Magdalen College school and King’s College, London. He entered the Bengal Civil Service in 1867, and held various appointments of increasing importance until he became chief secretary to the Bengal government (1891-1896), acting home secretary to the government of India (1896), and chief commissioner of Assam (1896-1902). He retired in 1902, and soon became known as the leading English champion of the Indian nationalists. In 1906 he entered parliament as Liberal member for East Nottingham. He was the author of New India (1885; revised 1904-1907).

His brother, James Sutherland Cotton (1847-  ), was born in India on the 17th of July 1847, and was educated at Magdalen College school and Trinity College, Oxford. For many years he was editor of the Academy; he published various works on Indian subjects, and was the English editor of the revised edition of the Imperial Gazetteer of India (1908).

COTTON, CHARLES (1630-1687), English poet, the translator of Montaigne, was born at Beresford in Staffordshire on the 28th of April 1630. His father, Charles Cotton, was a man of marked ability, and counted among his friends Ben Jonson, John Selden, Sir Henry Wotton and Izaak Walton. The son was apparently not sent to the university, but he had as tutor Ralph Rawson, one of the fellows ejected from Brasenose College, Oxford, in 1648. Cotton travelled in France and perhaps in Italy, and at the age of twenty-eight he succeeded to an estate greatly encumbered by lawsuits during his father’s lifetime. The rest of his life was spent chiefly in country pursuits, but from his Voyage to Ireland in Burlesque (1670) we know that he held a captain’s commission and was ordered to that country. His friendship with Izaak Walton began about 1655, and the fact of this intimacy seems a sufficient answer to the charges sometimes brought against Cotton’s character, based chiefly on his coarse burlesques of Virgil and Lucian. Walton’s initials made into a cipher with his own were placed over the door of his fishing cottage on the Dove; and to the Compleat Angler he added “Instructions how to angle for a trout or grayling in a clear stream.” He married in 1656 his cousin Isabella, who was a sister of Colonel Hutchinson. It was for his wife’s sister, Miss Stanhope Hutchinson, that he undertook the translation of Corneille’s Horace (1671). His wife died in 1670 and five years later he married the dowager countess of Ardglass; she had a jointure of £1500 a year, but it was secured from his extravagance, and at his death in 1687 he was insolvent. He was buried in St James’s church, Piccadilly, on the 16th of February 1687. Cotton’s reputation as a burlesque writer may account for the neglect with which the rest of his poems have been treated. Their excellence was not, however, overlooked by good critics. Coleridge praises the purity and unaffectedness of his style in Biographia Literaria, and Wordsworth (Preface, 1815) gave a copious quotation from the “Ode to Winter.” The “Retirement” is printed by Walton in the second part of the Compleat Angler. His masterpiece in translation, the Essays of M. de Montaigne (1685-1686, 1693, 1700, &c.), has often been reprinted, and still maintains its reputation; his other works include The Scarronides, or Virgil Travestie (1664-1670), a gross burlesque of the first and fourth books of the Aeneid, which ran through fifteen editions; Burlesque upon Burlesque, ... being some of Lucian’s Dialogues newly put into English fustian (1675); The Moral Philosophy of the Stoicks (1667), from the French of Guillaume du Vair; The History of the Life of the Duke d’Espernon (1670), from the French of G. Girard; the Commentaries (1674) of Blaise de Montluc; the Planter’s Manual (1675), a practical book on arboriculture, in which he was an expert; The Wonders of the Peake (1681); the Compleat Gamester and The Fair one of Tunis, both dated 1674, are also assigned to Cotton.

William Oldys contributed a life of Cotton to Hawkins’s edition (1760) of the Compleat Angler. His Lyrical Poems were edited by J. R. Tutin in 1903, from an unsatisfactory edition of 1689. His translation of Montaigne was edited in 1892, and in a more elaborate form in 1902, by W. C. Hazlitt, who omitted or relegated to the notes the passages in which Cotton interpolates his own matter, and supplied his omissions.

COTTON, GEORGE EDWARD LYNCH (1813-1866), English educationist and divine, was born at Chester on the 29th of October 1813. He received his education at Westminster school, and at Trinity College, Cambridge. Here he joined the Low Church party, and was also the intimate friend of several disciples of Thomas Arnold, among whom were C. J. Vaughan and W. J. Conybeare. The influence of Arnold determined the character and course of his life. He graduated B.A. in 1836, and became an assistant-master at Rugby. Here he worked devotedly for fifteen years, inspired with Arnold’s spirit, and heartily entering into his plans and methods. He became master of the fifth form about 1840 and was singularly successful with the boys. In 1852 he accepted the appointment of headmaster at Marlborough College, then in a state of almost hopeless disorganization, and in his six years of rule raised it to a high position. In 1858 Cotton was offered the see of Calcutta, which, after much hesitation about quitting Marlborough, he accepted. For its peculiar duties and responsibilities he was remarkably fitted by the simplicity and strength of his character, by his large tolerance, and by the experience which he had gained as teacher and ruler at Rugby and Marlborough. The government of India had just been transferred from the East India Company to the crown, and questions of education were eagerly discussed. Cotton gave himself energetically to the work of establishing schools for British and Eurasian children, classes which had been hitherto much neglected. He did much also to improve the position of the chaplains, and was unwearied in missionary visitation. His sudden death was widely mourned. On the 6th of October 1866 he had consecrated a cemetery at Kushtea on the Ganges, and was crossing a plank leading from the bank to the steamer when he slipped and fell into the river. He was carried away by the current and never seen again.

A memoir of his life with selections from his journals and correspondence, edited by his widow, was published in 1871.

COTTON, JOHN (1585-1652), English and American Puritan divine, sometimes called “The Patriarch of New England,” born in Derby, England, on the 4th of December 1585. He was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, graduating B.A. in 1603 and M.A. in 1606, and became a fellow in Emmanuel College, Cambridge, then a stronghold of Puritanism, where, during the next six years, according to his friend and biographer, Rev. Samuel Whiting, he was “head lecturer and dean, and Catechist,” and “a dilligent tutor to many pupils.” In June 1612 he became vicar of the parish church of St Botolphs in Boston, Lincolnshire, where he remained for twenty-one years and was extremely popular. Becoming more and more a Puritan in spirit, he ceased, about 1615, to observe certain ceremonies prescribed by the legally authorized ritual, and in 1632 action was begun against him in the High Commission Court. He thereupon escaped, disguised, to London, lay in concealment there for several months, and, having been deeply interested from its beginning in the colonization of New England, he eluded the watch set for him at the various English ports, and in July 1633 emigrated to the colony of Massachusetts Bay, arriving at Boston early in September. On the 10th of October he was chosen “teacher” of the First Church of Boston, of which John Wilson (1588-1667) was pastor, and here he remained until his death on the 23rd of December 1652. In the newer, as in the older Boston, his popularity was almost unbounded, and his influence, both in ecclesiastical and in civil affairs, was probably greater than that of any other minister in theocratic New England. According to the contemporary historian, William Hubbard, “Whatever he delivered in the pulpit was soon put into an order of court, if of a civil, or set up as a practice in the church, if of an ecclesiastical concernment.” His influence, too, was generally beneficent, though it was never used to further the cause of religious freedom, or of democracy, his theory of government being given in an oft-quoted passage: “Democracy, I do not conceyve that ever God did ordeyne as a fitt government eyther for church or commonwealth.... As for Monarchy and aristocracy they are both for them clearly approved, and directed in Scripture yet so as (God) referreth the sovereigntie to himselfe, and setteth up Theocracy in both, as the best form of government.” He naturally took an active part in most, if not all, of the political and theological controversies of his time, the two principal of which were those concerning Antinomianism and the expulsion of Roger Williams. In the former his position was somewhat equivocal—he first supported and then violently opposed Anne Hutchinson,—in the latter he approved Williams’s expulsion as “righteous in the eyes of God,” and subsequently in a pamphlet discussion with Williams, particularly in his Bloudy Tenent, Washed and made White in the Blood of the Lamb (1647), vigorously opposed religious freedom. He was a man of great learning and was a prolific writer. His writings include: The Keyes to the Kingdom of Heaven and the Power thereof (1644), The Way of the Churches of Christ in New England (1645), and The Way of Congregational Churches Cleared (1648), these works constituting an invaluable exposition of New England Congregationalism; and Milk for Babes, Drawn out of the Breasts of Both Testaments, Chiefly for the Spirituall Nourishment of Boston Babes in either England, but may be of like Use for any Children (1646), widely used for many years, in New England, for the religious instruction of children.

See the quaint sketch by Cotton Mather, John Cotton’s grandson, in Magnalia (London, 1702), and a sketch by Cotton’s contemporary and friend, Rev. Samuel Whiting, printed in Alexander Young’s Chronicles of the First Planters of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay from 1623 to 1636 (Boston, 1846); also A. W. McClure’s The Life of John Cotton (Boston, 1846), a chapter in Arthur B. Ellis’s History of the First Church in Boston (Boston, 1881), and a chapter in Williston Walker’s Ten New England Leaders (New York, 1901). (W. Wr.)

COTTON, SIR ROBERT BRUCE, Bart. (1571-1631), English antiquary, the founder of the Cottonian library, born at Denton in Huntingdonshire on the 22nd of January 1571, was a descendant, as he delighted to boast, of Robert Bruce. He was educated at Westminster school under William Camden the antiquary, and at Jesus College, Cambridge. His antiquarian tastes were early displayed in the collection of ancient records, charters and other manuscripts, which had been dispersed from the monastic libraries in the reign of Henry VIII.; and throughout the whole of his life he was an energetic collector of antiquities from all parts of England and the continent. His house at Westminster had a garden going down to the river and occupied part of the site of the present House of Lords. It was the meeting-place in the last years of Elizabeth’s reign of the antiquarian society founded by Archbishop Parker. In 1600 Cotton visited the north of England with Camden in search of Pictish and Roman monuments and inscriptions. His reputation as an expert in heraldry led to his being asked by Queen Elizabeth to discuss the question of precedence between the English ambassador and the envoy of Spain, then in treaty at Calais. He drew up an elaborate paper establishing the precedence of the English ambassador. On the accession of James I. he was knighted, and in 1608 he wrote a Memorial on Abuses in the Navy, that resulted in a navy commission, of which he was made a member. He also presented to the king an historical Inquiry into the Crown Revenues, in which he speaks freely about the expenses of the royal household, and asserts that tonnage and poundage are only to be levied in war time, and to “proceed out of good will, not of duty.” In this paper he supported the creation of the order of baronets, each of whom was to pay the crown £1000; and in 1611 he himself received the title.

Cotton helped John Speed in the compilation of his History of England (1611), and was regarded by contemporaries as the compiler of Camden’s History of Elizabeth. It seems more likely that it was executed by Camden, but that Cotton exercised a general supervision, especially with regard to the story of Mary queen of Scots. The presentation of his mother’s history was naturally important to James I., and Cotton himself took a keen interest in the matter. He had had the room in Fotheringay where Mary was executed transferred to his family seat at Connington. Meanwhile he was enlarging his collection of documents. In 1614 Arthur Agarde (q.v.) left his papers to him, and Camden’s manuscripts came to him in 1623. In 1615 Cotton, as the intimate of the earl of Somerset, whose innocence he always maintained, was placed in confinement on the charge of being implicated in the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury; he confessed that he had acted as intermediary between Sarmiento, the Spanish ambassador, and Somerset, and had altered the dates of Somerset’s correspondence. He was released after about eight months’ imprisonment without formal trial, and obtained a pardon on payment of £500. His friendship with Gondomar, Spanish ambassador in England from 1613 to 1621, brought further suspicion, probably undeserved, upon Cotton, of unduly favouring the Catholic party. From Charles I. and Buckingham Cotton received no favour; his attitude towards the court had begun to change, and he became the intimate friend of Sir John Eliot, Sir Simonds d’Ewes and John Selden. He had entered parliament in 1604 as member for Huntingdon; in 1624 he sat for Old Sarum; in 1625 for Thetford; and in 1628 for Castle Rising, Norfolk. In the debate on supply in 1625 Cotton provided Eliot with full notes defending the action of the opposition in parliament, and in 1628 the leaders of the party met at Cotton’s house to decide on their policy. In 1626 he gave advice before the council against debasing the standard of the coinage; and in January 1628 he was again before the council, urging the summons of a parliament. His arguments on the latter occasion are contained in his tract entitled The Danger in which the Kingdom now standeth and the Remedy. In October of the next year he was arrested, together with the earls of Bedford, Somerset, and Clare, for having circulated, with ironical purpose, a tract known as the Proposition to bridle Parliament, which had been addressed some fifteen years before by Sir Robert Dudley to James I., advising him to govern by force; the circulation of this by Parliamentarians was regarded as intended to insinuate that Charles’s government was arbitrary and unconstitutional. Cotton denied knowledge of the matter, but the original was discovered in his house, and the copies had been put in circulation by a young man who lived after him and was said to be his natural son. Cotton was himself released the next month; but the proceedings in the star chamber continued, and, to his intense vexation, his library was sealed up by the king. He died on the 6th of May 1631, and was buried in Connington church, Huntingdonshire, where there is a monument to his memory.

Many of Cotton’s pamphlets were widely read in manuscript during his lifetime, but only two of his works were printed, The Reign of Henry III. (1627) and The Danger in which the Kingdom now Standeth (1628). His son, Sir Thomas (1594-1662), added considerably to the Cottonian library; and Sir John, the fourth baronet, presented it to the nation in 1700. In 1731 the collection, which had in the interval been removed to the Strand, and thence to Ashburnham House, was seriously damaged by fire. In 1753 it was transferred to the British Museum.

See the article [Libraries], and Edwards’s Lives of the Founders of the British Museum, vol. i. Several of Cotton’s papers have been printed under the title Cottoni Posthuma; others were published by Thomas Hearne.

COTTON (Fr. coton; from Arab, qutun), the most important of the vegetable fibres of the world, consisting of unicellular hairs which occur attached to the seeds of various species of plants of the genus Gossypium, belonging to the Mallow order (Malvaceae). Each fibre is formed by the outgrowth of a single epidermal cell of the testa or outer coat of the seed.

Botany and Cultivation.—The genus Gossypium includes herbs and shrubs, which have been cultivated from time immemorial, and are now found widely distributed throughout the tropical and subtropical regions of both hemispheres. South America, the West Indies, tropical Africa and Southern Asia are the homes of the various members, but the plants have been introduced with success into other lands, as is well indicated by the fact that although no species of Gossypium is native to the United States of America, that country now produces over two-thirds of the world’s supply of cotton. Under normal conditions in warm climates many of the species are perennials, but, in the United States for example, climatic conditions necessitate the plants being renewed annually, and even in the tropics it is often found advisable to treat them as annuals to ensure the production of cotton of the best quality, to facilitate cultural operations, and to keep insect and fungoid pests in check.

Microscopic examination of a specimen of mature cotton shows that the hairs are flattened and twisted, resembling somewhat in general appearance an empty and twisted fire hose. This characteristic is of great economic importance, the natural twist facilitating the operation of spinning the fibres into thread or yarn. It also distinguishes the true cotton from the silk cottons or flosses, the fibres of which have no twist, and do not readily spin into thread, and for this reason, amongst others, are very considerably less important as textile fibres. The chief of these silk cottons is kapok, consisting of the hairs borne on the interior of the pods (but not attached to the seeds) of Eriodendron anfractuosum, the silk cotton tree, a member of the Bombacaceae, an order very closely allied to the Malvaceae.

Classification.—Considerable difficulty is encountered in attempting to draw up a botanical classification of the species of Gossypium. Several are only known in cultivation, and we have but little knowledge of the wild parent forms from which they have descended. During the periods the cottons have been cultivated, selection, conscious or unconscious, has been carried on, resulting in the raising, from the same stock probably, in different places, of well-marked forms, which, in the absence of the history of their origin, might be regarded as different species. Then again, during at least the last four centuries, cotton plants have been distributed from one country to another, only to render still more difficult any attempt to establish definitely the origin of the varieties now grown. Under these circumstances it is not surprising to find that those who have paid attention to the botany of the cottons differ greatly in the number of species they recognize. Linnaeus described five or six species, de Candolle thirteen. Of the two Italian botanists who in comparatively recent years have monographed the group, Parlatore (Le Specie dei cotoni, 1866) recognizes seven species, whilst Todaro (Relazione sulla culta dei cotoni, 1877-1878) describes over fifty species: many of these, however, are of but little economic importance, and, in spite of the difficulties mentioned above, it is possible for practical purposes to divide the commercially important plants into five species, placing these in two groups according to the character of the hairs borne on the seeds. Sir G. Watt’s exhaustive work on Wild and Cultivated Cotton Plants of the World (1907) is the latest authority on the subject; and his views on some debated points have been incorporated in the following account.

A seed of “Sea Island cotton” is covered with long hairs only, which are readily pulled off, leaving the comparatively small black seed quite clean or with only a slight fuzz at the end, whereas a seed of “Upland” or ordinary American cotton bears both long and short hairs; the former are fairly easily detached (less easily, however, than in Sea Island cotton), whilst the latter adhere very firmly, so that when the long hairs are pulled off the seed remains completely covered with a short fuzz. This is also the case with the ordinary Indian and African cottons. There remains one other important group, the so-called “kidney” cottons in which there are only long hairs, and the seed easily comes away clean as with “Sea Island,” but, instead of each seed being separate, the whole group in each of the three compartments of the capsule is firmly united together in a more or less kidney-shaped mass. Starting with this as the basis of classification, we can construct the following key, the remaining principal points of difference being indicated in their proper places:—

1. G. barbadense, Linn. This plant, known only in cultivation, is usually regarded as native to the West Indies. Watt regards it as closely allied to G. vitifolium, and considers the modern stock a hybrid, and probably not indigenous to the West Indies. He classifies the modern high-class Sea Island cottons as G. barbadense, var. maritima. Whatever may be its true botanical name it is the plant known in commerce as “Sea Island” cotton, owing to its introduction and successful cultivation in the Sea Islands and the coastal districts of South Carolina, Georgia and Florida. It yields the most valuable of all cottons, the hairs being long, fine and silky, and ranging in length from 3⁄8 to 2½ in. By careful selection (the methods of which are described below) in the United States, the quality of the product was much improved, and on the recent revival of the cotton industry in the West Indies American “Sea Island” seed was introduced back again to the original home of the species.

Egyptian cotton is usually regarded as being derived from the same species. Watt considers many of the Egyptian cottons to be races or hybrids of G. peruvianum, Cav. Egyptian cotton in length of staple is intermediate between average Sea Island and average Upland. It has, however, certain characteristics which cause it to be in demand even in the United States, where during recent years Egyptian cotton has comprised about 80% of all the “foreign” cottons imported. These special qualities are its fineness, strength, elasticity and great natural twist, which combined enable it to make very fine, strong yarns, suited to the manufacture of the better qualities of hosiery, for mixing with silk and wool, for making lace, &c. It also mercerizes very well. The principal varieties of Egyptian cotton are: Mitafifi, the best-known and most extensively grown, hardy and but little affected by climatic variation. It is usually regarded as the standard Egyptian cotton; the lint is yellowish brown, the seeds black and almost smooth, usually with a little tuft of short green hairs at the ends. Abassi, a variety comparatively recently obtained by selection. The lint is pure white, very fine and silky, but not so strong as Mitafifi cotton. Yannovitch, a variety known since about 1897, yields the finest and most silky lint of the white Egyptian cottons. Bamia, yielding a brown lint, very similar to Mitafifi, but slightly less valuable. Ashmouni, a variety principally cultivated in Upper Egypt. The lint is brown and generally resembles Mitafifi but is less valuable.

Other varieties are Zifiri, Hamouli and Gallini, all of minor importance.

2. G. brasiliense, Macf. (G. peruvianum, Engler), or kidney cotton. Amongst the varieties of cotton which are derived from this species appear to be Pernambuco, Maranham, Ceara, Aracaty and Maceio cottons. The fibre is generally white, somewhat harsh and wiry, and especially adapted for mixing with wool. The staple varies in length from 1 to about 1½ in.

3. G. hirsutum, Linn. Although G. barbadense yields the most valuable cotton, G. hirsutum is the most important cotton-yielding plant, being the source of American cotton, i.e. Upland, Georgia, New Orleans and Texas varieties. The staple varies usually in length between ¾ and 1¼ in. According to Watt there are many hybrids in American cottons between G. hirsutum and G. mexicanum.

4. G. herbaceum, Linn. Levant cotton is derived from this species. The majority of the races of cotton cultivated in India are often referred to this species, which is closely allied to G. hirsutum and has been regarded as identical with it. Amongst the cottons of this source are Hinganghat, Tinnevelly, Dharwar, Broach, Amraoti (Oomras or Oomrawattee), Kumta, Westerns, Dholera, Verawal, Bengals, Sind and Bhaunagar. Watt dissents from this view and classes these Indian cottons as G. obtusifolium and G. Nanking with their varieties. The Indian cottons are usually of short staple (about ¾ in.), but are probably capable of improvement.

5. G. arboreum, Linn. This species is often considered as indigenous to India, but Dr Engler has pointed out that it is found wild in Upper Guinea, Abyssinia, Senegal, etc. It is the “tree cotton” of India and Africa, being typically a large shrub or small tree. The fibre is fine and silky, of about an inch in length. In India it is known as Nurma or Deo cotton, and is usually stated to be employed for making thread for the turbans of the priests. Commercially it is of comparatively minor importance.

The following table, summarized from the Handbook to the Imperial Institute Cotton Exhibition, 1905, giving the length of staple and value on one date (January 16, 1905), will serve to indicate the comparative values of some of the principal commercial cottons. The actual value, of course, fluctuates greatly.

The close relationship between the length of the staple and the market price will be at once apparent.

Cultivation.—Cotton is very widely cultivated throughout the world, being grown on a greater or less scale as a commercial crop in almost every country included in the broad belt between latitudes 43° N. and 33° S., or approximately within the isothermal lines of 60° F.

The cotton plant requires certain conditions for its successful cultivation; but, given these, it is very little affected by seasonal vicissitudes. Thus, for example, in the United States the worst season rarely diminishes the crop by more than about a quarter or one-third; such a thing as a “half-crop” is unknown. Various climatic factors may cause temporary checks, but the growing and maturing period is sufficiently long to allow the plants to overcome these disturbances.

Cotton requires for its development from six to seven months of favourable weather. It thrives in a warm atmosphere, even in a very hot one, provided that it is moist and that the transpiration is not in excess of the supply of water. An idea of the requirements of the plant will perhaps be afforded by summarizing the conditions which have been found to give the best results in the United States.

During April (when the seed is usually sown) and May frequent light showers, which keep the ground sufficiently moist to assist germination and the growth of the young plants, are desired. Three to four inches of rain per month is the average. The active growing period is from early June to about the middle of August. During June and the first fortnight in July plenty of sunshine is necessary, accompanied by sufficient rain to promote healthy, but not excessive, growth; the normal rainfall in the cotton belt for this period is about 4½ in. per month. During the second portion of July and the first of August a slightly higher rainfall is beneficial, and even heavy rains do little harm, provided the subsequent months are dry and warm. The first flowers usually appear in June, and the bolls ripen from early in August. Picking takes place normally during September and October, and during these months dry weather is essential. Flowering and fruiting go on continually, although in diminishing degree, until the advent of frost, which kills the flowers and young bolls and so puts an end to the production of cotton for the season.

In the tropics the essential requirements are very similar, but there the dry season checks production in much the same way as do the frosts in temperate climates. In either case an adequate but not excessive rainfall, increasing from the time of sowing to the period of active growth, and then decreasing as the bolls ripen, with a dry picking season, combined with sunny days and warm nights, provide the ideal conditions for successful cotton cultivation. In regions where climatic conditions are favourable, cotton grows more or less successfully on almost all kinds of soil; it can be grown on light sandy soils, loams, heavy clays and sandy “bottom” lands with varying success. Sandy uplands produce a short stalk which bears fairly well. Clay and “bottom” lands produce a large, leafy plant, yielding less lint in proportion. The most suitable soils are medium grades of loam. The soil should be able to maintain very uniform conditions of moisture. Sudden variations in the amount of water supplied are injurious: a sandy soil cannot retain water; on the other hand a clay soil often maintains too great a supply, and rank growth with excess of foliage ensues. The best soil for cotton is thus a deep, well-drained loam, able to afford a uniform supply of moisture during the growing period. Wind is another important factor, as cotton does not do well in localities subject to very high winds; and in exposed situations, otherwise favourable, wind belts have at times to be provided.

Cultivation in the United States.—The United States being the most important cotton-producing country, the methods of cultivation practised there are first described, notes on methods adopted in other countries being added only when these differ considerably from American practice.

The culture of cotton must be a clean one. It is not necessarily deep culture, and during the growing season the cultivation is preferably very shallow. The result is a great destruction of the humus of the soil, and great leaching and washing, especially in the light loams of the hill country of the United States. The main object, therefore, of the American cotton-planter is to prevent erosion. Wherever the planters have failed to guard their fields by hillside ploughing and terracing, these have been extensively denuded of soil, rendering them barren, and devastating other fields lying at a lower level, which are covered by the wash. The hillsides have gradually to be terraced with the plough, upon almost an exact level. On the better farms this is done with a spirit-level or compass from time to time and hillside ditches put in at the proper places. In the moist bottom-lands along the rivers it is the custom to throw the soil up in high beds with the plough, and then to cultivate them deep. This is the more common method of drainage, but it is expensive, as it has to be renewed every few years. More intelligent planters drain their bottom-lands with underground or open drains. In the case of small plantations the difficulties of adjusting a right-of-way for outlet ditches have interfered seriously with this plan. Many planters question the wisdom of deepbreaking and subsoiling. There can be no question that a deep soil is better for the cotton-plant; but the expense of obtaining it, the risk of injuring the soil through leaching, and the danger of bringing poor soil to the surface, have led many planters to oppose this plan. Sandy soils are made thereby too dry and leachy, and it is a questionable proceeding to turn the heavy clays upon the top. Planters are, as a result, divided in opinion as to the wisdom of subsoiling. Nothing definite can be said with regard to a rotation of crops upon the cotton plantation. Planters appreciate generally the value of broad-leaved and narrow-leaved plants and root crops, but there is an absence of exact knowledge, with the result that their practices are very varied. It is believed that the rotation must differ with every variety of soil, with the result that each planter has his own method, and little can be said in general. A more careful study of the physical as well as the chemical properties of a soil must precede intelligent experimentation in rotation. This knowledge is still lacking with regard to most of the cotton soils. The only uniform practice is to let the fields “rest” when they have become exhausted. Nature then restores them very rapidly. The exhaustion of the soil under cotton culture is chiefly due to the loss of humus, and nature soon puts this back in the excellent climate of the cotton-growing belt. Fields considered utterly used up, and allowed to “rest” for years, when cultivated again have produced better crops than those which had been under a more or less thoughtful rotation. In spite of the clean culture, good crops of cotton have been grown on some soils in the south for more than forty successive years. The fibre takes almost nothing from the land, and where the seeds are restored to the soil in some form, even without other fertilizers, the exhaustion of the soil is very slow. If the burning-up of humus and the leaching of the soil could be prevented, there is no reason why a cotton soil should not produce good crops continuously for an indefinite time. Bedding up land previous to planting is almost universal. The bed forms a warm seed-bed in the cool weather of early spring, and holds the manure which is drilled in usually to better advantage. The plants are generally left 2 or 3 in. above the middle of the row, which in four-foot rows gives a slope of 1 in. to the foot, causing the plough to lean from the plants in cultivating, and thus to cut fewer roots. The plants are usually cut out with a hoe from 8 to 14 in. apart. It seems to make little difference exactly what distance they are, so long as they are not wider apart on average land than 1 ft. On rich bottom-land they should be more distant. The seed is dropped from a planter, five or six seeds in a single line, at regular intervals 10 to 12 in. apart. A narrow deep furrow is usually run immediately in advance of the planter, to break up the soil under the seed. The only time the hoe is used is to thin out the cotton in the row; all the rest of the cultivation is by various forms of ploughs and so-called cultivators. The question of deep and shallow culture has been much discussed among planters without any conclusion applicable to all soils being reached. All grass and weeds must be kept down, and the crust must be broken after every rain, but these seem to be the only principles upon which all agree. The most effective tool against the weeds is a broad sharp “sweep,” as it is called, which takes everything it meets, while going shallower than most ploughs. Harrows and cultivators are used where there are few weeds, and the mulching process is the one desired.

The date of cotton-planting varies from March 1 to June 1, according to situation. Planting begins early in March in Southern Texas, and the first blooms will appear there about May 15. Planting may be done as late as April 15 in the Piedmont region of North Carolina, and continue as late as the end of May. The first blooms will appear in this region about July 15. Picking may begin on July 10 in Southern Texas, and continue late into the winter, or until the rare frost kills the plants. It may not begin until September 10 in Piedmont, North Carolina. It is a peculiarity of the cotton-plant to lose a great many of its blooms and bolls. When the weather is not favourable at the fruiting stage, the otherwise hardy cotton plant displays its great weakness in this way. It sheds its “forms” (as the buds are called), blooms, and even half-grown bolls in great numbers. It has frequently been noted that even well-fertilized plants upon good soil will mature only 15 or 20% of the bolls produced. No means are known so far for preventing this great waste. Experts are at an entire loss to form a correct idea of the cause, or to apply any effective remedy.

Cotton-picking is at once the most difficult and most expensive operation in cotton production. It is paid for at the rate of from 45 to 50 cents per cwt. of seed cotton. The work is light, and is effectually performed by women and even children, as well as men; but it is tedious and requires care. The picking season will average 100 days. It is difficult to get the hands to work until the cotton is fully opened, and it is hard to induce them to pick over 100 ℔ a day, though some expert hands are found in every cotton plantation who can pick twice as much. The loss resulting from careless work is very serious. The cotton falls out easily or is dropped. The careless gathering of dead leaves and twigs, and the soiling of the cotton by earth or by the natural colouring matter from the bolls, injure the quality. It has been commonly thought that the production of cotton in the south is limited by the amount that can be picked, but this limit is evidently very remote. The negro population of the towns and villages of the cotton country is usually available for a considerable share in cotton-picking. There is in the cotton states a rural population of over 7,000,000, more or less occupied in cotton-growing, and capable, at the low average of 100 ℔ a day, of picking daily nearly 500,000 bales. It is evident, therefore, that if this number could work through the whole season of 100 days, they could pick three or four times as much cotton as the largest crop ever made. Great efforts have been made to devise cotton-picking machines, but, as yet, complete success has not been attained. Lowne’s machine is useful in specially wide-planted fields and when the ground is sufficiently hard.

Cotton Ginning.—The crop having been picked, it has to be prepared for purpose of manufacture. This comprises separating the fibre or lint from the seeds, the operation being known as “ginning.” When this has been accomplished the weight of the crop is reduced to about one-third, each 100 ℔ of seed cotton as picked yielding after ginning some 33 ℔ of lint and 66 ℔ of cotton seed. The actual amounts differ with different varieties, conditions of cultivation, methods of ginning, &c.; a recent estimate in the United States gives 35% of lint for Upland cotton and 25% for Sea Island cotton as more accurate.

The separation of lint from seed is accomplished in various ways. The most primitive is hand-picking, the fibre being laboriously pulled from off each seed, as still practised in parts of Africa. In modern commercial cotton production ginning machines are always used. Very simple machines are used in some parts of Africa. The simplest cotton gin in extensive use is the “churka,” used from early times, and still largely employed in India and China. It consists essentially of two rollers either both of wood, or one of wood and one of iron, geared to revolve in contact in opposite directions; the seed cotton is fed to the rollers, the lint is drawn through, and the seed being unable to pass between the rollers is rejected. With this primitive machine, worked by hand, about 5 ℔ of lint is the daily output. In the Macarthy roller gin, the lint, drawn by a roller covered with leather (preferably walrus hide), is drawn between a metal plate called the “doctor” (fixed tangentially to the roller and very close to it) and a blade called the “beater” or knife, which rapidly moves up and down immediately behind, and parallel to, the fixed plate. The lint is held by the roughness of the roller, and the blade of the knife or beater readily detaches the seed from the lint; the seed falls through a grid, while the lint passes over the roller to the other side of the machine. A hand Macarthy roller gin worked by two men will clean about 4 to 6 ℔ of lint per hour. A similar, but larger machine, requiring about 1½ horse-power to run it, will turn out 50 to 60 ℔ of Egyptian or 60 to 80 ℔ of Sea Island cleaned cotton per hour. By simple modifications the Macarthy gin can be used for all kinds of cotton. Various attempts have been made to substitute a comb for the knife or beater, and one of the latest productions is the “Universal fibre gin,” in which a series of blunt combs working horizontally replace the solid beater and so-called knife of the Macarthy gin.

Opposed to the various types of roller gins is the “saw gin,” invented by Eli Whitney, an American, in 1792. This machine, under various modifications, is employed for ginning the greater portion of the cotton grown in the Southern States of America. It consists essentially of a series of circular notched disks, the so-called saws, revolving between the interstices of an iron bed upon which the cotton is placed: the teeth of the “saws”. catch the lint and pull it off from the seeds, then a revolving brush removes the detached lint from the saws, and creates sufficient draught to carry the lint out of the machine to some distance. Saw gins do considerable damage to the fibre, but for short-stapled cotton they are largely used, owing to their great capacity. The average yield of lint per “saw” in the United States, when working under perfect conditions, is about 6 ℔ per hour. Some of the American ginners are very large indeed, a number (Bulletin of the Bureau of the Census on Cotton Production) being reported as containing on the average 1156 saws with an average production of 4120 bales of cotton. Saw gins are not adapted to long-stapled cottons, such as Sea Island and Egyptian, which are generally ginned by machines of the Macarthy type.

The machine which will gin the largest quantity in the shortest time is naturally preferred, unless such injury is occasioned as materially to diminish the market value of the cotton. This has sometimes been to the extent of 1d. or 2d. per ℔ and even more as regards Sea Island and other long-stapled cottons. The production, therefore, of the most perfect and efficient cotton-cleaning machinery is of importance alike to the planter and manufacturer.

Baling.—The cotton leaves the ginning machine in a very loose condition, and has to be compressed into bales for convenience of transport. Large baling presses are worked by hydraulic power; the operation needs no special description. Bales from different countries vary greatly in size, weight and appearance. The American bale has been described in a standard American book on cotton as “the clumsiest, dirtiest, most expensive and most wasteful package, in which cotton or any other commodity of like value is anywhere put up.” Suggestions for its improvement, which if carried out would (it is estimated) result in a monetary saving of £1,000,000 annually, were made by the Lancashire Private Cotton Investigation Commission which visited the Southern States of America in 1906.

The approximate weights of some of the principal bales on the English market are as follows:—

With baling the work of the producer is concluded.

Cultivation in Egypt.—Climatic conditions in Egypt differ radically from those in the United States, the rainfall being so small as to be quite insufficient for the needs of the plant, very little rain indeed falling in the Nile Delta during the whole growing season of the crop: yet Egypt is in order the third cotton-producing country of the world, elaborate irrigation works supplying the crop with the requisite water. The area devoted to cotton in Egypt is about 1,800,000 acres, and nine-tenths of it is in the Nile Delta. The delta soil is typically a heavy, black, alluvial clay, very fertile, but difficult to work; admixture of sand is beneficial, and the localities where this occurs yield the best cotton. Formerly in Egypt the cotton was treated as a perennial, but this practice has been generally abandoned, and fresh plants are raised from seed each year, as in America; one great advantage is that more than one crop can thus be obtained each year. The following rotation is frequently adopted. It should be noted that in Egypt the year is divided into three seasons—winter, summer and “Nili.” The two first explain themselves; Nili is the season in which the Nile overflows its banks.

For cotton cultivation the land is ploughed, carefully levelled, and then thrown up into ridges about 3 ft. apart. Channels formed at right angles to the cultivation ridges provide for the access of water to the crop. The seeds, previously soaked, are sown, usually in March, on the sides of the ridges, and the land watered. After the seedlings appear, thinning is completed in usually three successive hoeings, the plants being watered after thinning, and subsequently at intervals of from twelve to fifteen days, until about the end of August when picking commences. The total amount of water given is approximately equivalent to a rainfall of about 35 in. The crop is picked, ginned and baled in the usual way, the Macarthy style action roller gins being almost exclusively employed.

Cotton Seed.—The history of no agricultural product contains more of interest and instruction for the student of economics than does that of cotton seed in the United States. The revolution in its treatment is a real romance of industry. Up till 1870 or thereabouts, cotton seed was regarded as a positive nuisance upon the American plantation. It was left to accumulate in vast heaps about ginhouses, to the annoyance of the farmer and the injury of his premises. Cotton seed in those days was the object of so much aversion that the planter burned it or threw it into running streams, as was most convenient. If the seed were allowed to lie about, it rotted, and hogs and other animals, eating it, often died. It was very difficult to burn, and when dumped into rivers and creeks was carried out by flood water to fill the edges of the flats with a decaying and offensive mass of vegetable matter. Although used in the early days to a limited extent as a food for milch cows and other stock, and to a larger extent as a manure, no systematic efforts were made anywhere in the South to manufacture the seed until the later ’fifties, when the first cotton seed mills were established. It is said that there were only seven cotton oil mills in the South in 1860. The cotton-growing industry was interrupted by the Civil War, and the seed-milling business did not begin again until 1868. After that time the number of mills rapidly increased. There were 25 in the South in 1870, 50 in 1880, 120 in 1890, and about 500 in 1901, about one-third being in Texas.

Experience shows that 1000 ℔ of seed are produced for every 500 ℔ of cotton brought to market. On the basis, therefore, of a cotton crop of 10,000,000 bales of 500 ℔ each, there are produced 5,000,000 tons of cotton seed. If about 3,000,000 tons only are pressed, there remain to be utilized on the farm 2,000,000 tons of cotton seed, which, if manufactured, would produce a total of $100,000,000 from cotton seed. In contrast with the farmers of the ’sixties, the southern planter of the 20th century appreciates the value of his cotton seed, and farmers, too remote from the mills to get it pressed, now feed to their stock all the cotton seed they conveniently can, and use the residue either in compost or directly as manure. The average of a large number of analyses of Upland cotton seed gives the following figures for its fertilizing constituents:—Nitrogen, 3.07%; phosphoric acid, 1.02%; potash, 1.17%; besides small amounts of lime, magnesia and other valuable but less important ingredients. Sea Island cotton seed is rather more valuable than Upland: the corresponding figures for the three principal constituents being nitrogen 3.51, phosphoric acid 1.69, potash 1.59%. Using average prices paid for nitrogen, phosphoric acid and potash when bought in large quantities and in good forms, these ingredients, in a ton of cotton seed, amount to $9.00 worth of fertilizing material. Compared with the commercial fertilizer which the farmer has to buy, cotton seed possesses, therefore, a distinct value.

The products of cotton seed have become important elements in the national industry of the United States. The main product is the refined oil, which is used for a great number of purposes, such as a substitute for olive oil, mixed with beef products for preparation of compound lard, which is estimated to consume one-third of cotton seed oil produced in the States. The poorer grades are employed in the manufacture of soap, candles and phonograph records. Miners’ lamp oil consists of the bleached oil mixed with kerosene. Cotton seed cake or meal (the residue after the oil is extracted) is one of the most valuable of feeding stuffs, as the following simple comparison between it and oats and corn will show:—

Cotton seed meal, though poor in carbohydrates, the fat- and energy-supplying ingredients, is exceedingly rich in protein, the nerve- and muscle-feeding ingredients. But it still contains a large amount of oil, which forms animal fat and heat, and thus makes up for part of its deficiency in carbohydrates. The meal, in fact, is so rich in protein that it is best utilized as a food for animals when mixed with some coarse fodder, thus furnishing a more evenly-balanced ration. In comparative valuations of feeding stuffs it has been found that cotton seed meal exceeds corn meal by 62%, wheat by 67%, and raw cotton seed by 26%. Cotton seed meal, in the absence of sufficient stock to consume it, is also used extensively as a fertilizer, and for this purpose it is worth, determining the price on the same basis as used above for the seed, from $19 to $20 per ton. But it has seldom reached this price, except in some of the northern states, where it is used for feeding purposes. A more rational proceeding would be to feed the meal to animals and apply the resulting manure to the soil. When this is done, from 80 to 90% of the fertilizing material of the meal is recovered in the manure, only 10 to 20% being converted by the animal into meat and milk. The profit derived from the 20% thus removed is a very large one. These facts indicate that we have here an agricultural product the market price of which is still far below its value as compared, on the basis of its chemical composition, either with other feeding stuffs or with other fertilizers. Though it is probably destined to be used even more extensively as a fertilizer before the demand for it as a feeding stuff becomes equal to the supply, practically all the cotton seed meal of the south will ultimately be used for feeding. One explanation of this condition of things is that there is still a large surplus of cotton seed which cannot be manufactured by the mills. Another reason is found in the absence of cattle in the south to eat it.

With the consideration of cotton seed oil and meal we have not, however, exhausted its possibilities. Cotton seed hulls constitute about half the weight of the ginned seed. After the seed of Upland cotton has been passed through a fine gin, which takes off the short lint or linters left upon it by the farmer, it is passed through what is called a sheller, consisting of a revolving cylinder, armed with numerous knives, which cut the seed in two and force the kernels or meats from the shells. The shells and kernels are then separated in a winnowing machine. This removal of the shell makes a great difference in the oilcake, as the decorticated cake is more nutritious than the undecorticated. For a long time these shells or hulls, as they are called, were burned at oil mills for fuel, 2½ tons being held equal to a cord of wood, and 41⁄3 tons to a ton of coal. The hulls thus burned produced an ash containing an average of 9% of phosphoric acid and 24% of potash—a very valuable fertilizer in itself, and one eagerly sought by growers of tobacco and vegetables. It was not long, however, before the stock-feeder in the South found that cotton seed hulls were an excellent substitute for hay. They are used on a very large scale in the vicinity of oil mills in southern cities like Memphis, New Orleans, Houston, and Little Rock, from 500 to 5000 cattle being often collected in a single yard for this purpose. No other feed is required, the only provision necessary being an adequate supply of water and an occasional allowance of salt. Many thousands of cattle are fattened annually in this way at remarkably low cost.

Careful attention is now given to the employment of the seed in new cotton countries, and oil expression is practised in the West Indies. Hull is the principal seat of the industry in Great Britain, and enormous quantities of Indian and Egyptian cotton seed are imported and worked up.

The following diagram, modified from one by Grimshaw, in accordance with the results obtained by the better class of modern mills, gives an interesting résumé of the products obtained from a ton of cotton seed:—

Products from a Ton of Cotton Seed.

Pests and Diseases of the Cotton Plant.

Insect Pests.—It is common knowledge that when any plant is cultivated on a large scale various diseases and pests frequently appear. In some cases the pest was already present but of minor importance. As the supply of its favourite food plant is increased, conditions of life for the pest are improved, and it accordingly multiplies also, possibly becoming a serious hindrance to successful cultivation. At other times the pest is introduced, and under congenial conditions (and possibly in the absence of some other organism which keeps it in check in its native country) increases accordingly. Some idea of the enormous damage wrought by the collective attacks of individually small and weak animals may be gathered from the fact that a conservative estimate places the loss due to insect attacks on cotton in the United States at the astounding figure of $60,000,000 (£12,000,000) annually. Of this total no less than $40,000,000 (£8,000,000) is credited to a small beetle, the cotton boll weevil, and to two caterpillars. The best means of combating these attacks depends on a knowledge of the life-histories and habits of the pests. The following notes deal only with the practical side of the question, and as the United States produce some seven-tenths of the world’s cotton crop attention is especially directed to the principal cotton pests of that country. Those of other regions are only referred to when sufficiently important to demand separate notice.

The cotton boll weevil (Anthonomus grandis), a small grey weevil often called the Mexican boll weevil, is the most serious pest of cotton in the United States, where the damage done by it in 1907 was estimated at about £5,000,000. It steadily increased in destructiveness during the preceding eight years. Attention was drawn to it in 1862, when it caused the abandonment of cotton cultivation about Monclova in Mexico. About 1893 it appeared in Texas, and then rapidly spread. It is easily transported from place to place in seed-cotton, and for this reason the Egyptian government in 1904 prohibited the importation of American cotton seed. Not only is the pest carried from place to place, but it also migrates, and in 1907 it crossed from Louisiana, where it first appeared in 1905, to Mississippi. That the insect is likely to prove adaptable is perhaps indicated by the fact that in 1906 it made a northward advance of about 60 m. in a season with no obvious special features favouring the pest. Its eastern progress was also rapid. “The additional territory infested during 1904 aggregates about 15,000,000 sq. m., representing approximately an area devoted to the culture of cotton of 900,000 acres” (Year-book, U.S. Dept. Agriculture, 1904). In 1906 the additional area invaded amounted to 1,500,000 acres (Ibid., 1906).

The adult weevils puncture the young flower-buds and deposit eggs; and as the grubs from the eggs develop, the bud drops. They also lay eggs later in the year in the young bolls. These do not drop, but as the grubs develop the cotton is ruined and the bolls usually become discoloured and crack, their contents being rendered useless.

No certain remedy is known for the destruction on a commercial scale of the boll weevil, but every effort has been made in the United States to check the advance of the insect, to ascertain and encourage its natural enemies, and to propagate races of cotton which resist its attacks. Special interest attaches to the investigations made by Mr O. F. Cook, of the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, in Guatemala. The Indians in part of Guatemala raise cotton, although the boll weevil is abundant. Examination showed that although the weevil attacked the young buds these did not drop off, but that a special growth of tissue inside the bud frequently killed the grub. Also, inside the young bolls which had been pierced a similar proliferation or growth of the tissue was set up, which enveloped and killed the pest. Probably by unconscious selection of surviving plants through long ages this type has been evolved in Guatemala, and experiments have been made to develop weevil-resistant races in the United States. Mr Cook also found that the boll weevil was attacked, killed and eaten by an ant-like creature, the “kelep.” Attempts have been made to introduce this into the infested area in Texas; but owing to the winter proving fatal to the “kelep” its usefulness may be restricted to tropical and subtropical regions.

The cotton boll worm (Chloridea obsoleta, also known as Heliothis armiger) is a caterpillar. The parent moth lays eggs, from which the young “worms” hatch out. They bore holes and penetrate into flower-buds and young bolls, causing them to drop. Fortunately the “worms” prefer maize to cotton, and the inter-planting at proper times of maize, to be cut down and destroyed when well infested, is a method commonly employed to keep down this pest. Paris green kills it in its young stages before it has entered the buds or bolls. The boll worm is most destructive in the south-western states, where the damage done is said to vary from 2 to 60% of the crop. Taking a low average of 4%, the annual loss due to the pest is estimated at about £2,500,000, and it occupies second place amongst the serious cotton pests of the U.S.A. The boll worm is widely spread through the tropical and temperate zones. It may occur in a country without being a pest to cotton, e.g. in India it attacks various plants but not cotton. It has not yet been reported as a cotton pest in the West Indies.

The Egyptian boll worm (Earias insulana) is the most important insect pest in Egypt and occurs also in other parts of Africa. Indian boll worms include the same species, and the closely related Earias fabia, which also occurs in Egypt.

The cotton worm (Aletia argillacea)—also called cotton caterpillar, cotton army worm, cotton-leaf worm—is also one stage in the life-history of a moth. It is a voracious creature, and unchecked will often totally destroy a crop. In former years the annual damage done by it in the United States was assessed at £4,000,000 to £6,000,000. Dusting with Paris green is, however, an efficient remedy if promptly applied at the outset of the attack. The annual damage was in 1906 reduced to £1,000,000 to £2,000,000, and this on a larger area devoted to cotton than in the case of the estimate given above. It is the most serious pest of cotton in the West Indies. The Egyptian cotton worm is Prodenia littoralis.

The caterpillars (“cut worms”) of various species of Agrotis and other moths occur in all parts of the world and attack young cotton. They can be killed by spreading about cabbage leaves, &c., poisoned with Paris green.

Locusts, green-fly, leaf-bugs, blister mites, and various other pests also damage cotton, in a similar way to that in which they injure other crops.

The “cotton stainers,” various species of Dysdercus, are widely distributed, occurring for example in America, the West Indies, Africa, India, &c. The larvae suck the sap from the young bolls and seeds, causing shrivelling and reduction in quantity of fibre. They are called “stainers” because their excrement is yellow and stains the fibre; also if crushed during the process of ginning they give the cotton a reddish coloration. The Egyptian cotton seed bug or cotton stainer belongs to another genus, being Oxycarenus hyalinipennis. Other species of this genus occur on the west coast of Africa. They do considerable damage to cotton seed.

Fungoid Diseases.—“Wilt disease,” or “frenching,” perhaps the most important of the fungoid disease of cotton in the United States, is due to Neocosmospora vasinfecta. Young plants a few inches high are usually attacked; the leaves, beginning with the lower ones, turn yellow, and afterwards become brown and drop. The plants remain very dwarf and generally unhealthy, or die. The roots also are affected, and instead of growing considerably in length, branch repeatedly and give rise to little tufts of rootlets. There is no method known of curing this disease, and all that can be done is to take every precaution to eradicate it, by pulling up and burning diseased plants, isolating the infected area by means of trenches, and avoiding growing cotton, or an allied plant such as the ochro (Hibiscus esculentus), in the field. Fortunately the careful work of the U.S. Department of Agriculture and of planters such as Mr E. L. Rivers of James Island, South Carolina, has resulted in the production of disease-resistant races. In one instance Mr Rivers found one healthy plant in a badly affected field. The seed was saved and gave rise to a row of plants all of which grew healthily in an infected field, whereas 95% of ordinary Sea Island cotton plants from seed from a non-infected field planted alongside as a control were killed. The resistance was well maintained in succeeding generations, and races so raised form a practical means of combating this serious disease.

In “Root rot,” as the name implies, the roots are attacked, the fungus being a species of Ozonium, which envelops the roots in a white covering of mould or mycelium. The roots are prevented from fulfilling their function of taking up water and salts from the soil; the leaves accordingly droop, and the whole plant wilts and in bad attacks dies. It has yearly proved a more serious danger in Texas and other parts of the south-west of the United States, and the damage due to it in Texas during 1905 was estimated at about £750,000. No remedy is known for the disease, and cotton should not be planted on infected land for at least three or four years.

“Boll rot,” or “Anthracnose,” is a disease which may at times be sufficiently serious to destroy from 10 to 50% of the crop. The fungus which causes it (Colletotrichum gossypii) is closely related to one of the fungi attacking sugar-cane in various parts of the world. Small red-brown spots appear on the bolls, gradually enlarge, and develop into irregular black and grey patches. The damage may be only slight, or the entire boll may ripen prematurely and become dry and dead.

Many other diseases occur, but the above are sufficient to indicate some of the principal ones in the most important cotton countries of the world.

Improvement of Cotton by Seed Selection.

In the cotton belt of the United States it would be possible to put a still greater acreage under this crop, but the tendency is rather towards what is known as “diversified” or mixed farming than to making cotton the sole important crop. Cotton, however, is in increasing demand, and the problem for the American cotton planter is to obtain a better yield of cotton from the same area,—by “better yield” meaning an increase not only in quantity but also in quality of lint. This ideal is before the cotton grower in all parts of the world, but practical steps are not always taken to realize it. Some of the United States planters are alert to take advantage of the application of science to industry, and in many cases even to render active assistance, and very successful results have been attained by the co-operation of the United States Department of Agriculture and planters. With the improvement of cotton the name of Mr Herbert J. Webber is prominently associated, and a full discussion of methods and results will be found in his various papers in the Year-books of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The principle on which the work is based is that plants have their individualities and tend to transmit them to their progeny. Accordingly a selection of particular plants to breed from, because they possess certain desirable characteristics, is as rational as the selection of particular animals for breeding purposes in order to maintain the character of a herd of cattle or of a flock of sheep.

Inspection of a field of cotton shows that different plants vary as regards productiveness, length, and character of the lint, period of ripening, power of resistance to various pests and of withstanding drought. A simple method of increasing the yield is that practised with success by some growers in the States. Pickers are trained to recognize the best plants, “that is, those most productive, earliest in ripening, and having the largest, best formed and most numerous bolls.” These pickers go carefully over the field, usually just before the second picking, and gather ripe cotton from the best plants only; this selected seed cotton is ginned separately, and the seed used for sowing the next year’s crop.

A more elaborate method of selection is practised by some of the Sea Island cotton planters in the Sea Islands, famous for the quality of their cotton. A field is gone over carefully, and perhaps some 50 of the best plants selected; a second examination in the field reduces these perhaps to one half, and each plant is numbered. The cotton from each is collected and kept separately, and at the end of the season carefully examined and weighed, and a final selection is then made which reduces the number to perhaps five; the cotton from each of these plants is ginned separately and the seed preserved for sowing. The simplest possible case in which only one plant is finally selected is illustrated in the diagram.

From the seeds of the selected plant of the 1st year about 500 plants can be raised in the next year. One plant is selected again from these 500, and the general crop of seed is used to sow about five acres for the 3rd year, from which seed is obtained for the general crop in the 4th year. One special plant is selected each year from the 500 raised from the previous season’s test plant, and in four years’ time the progeny of this plant constitutes the “general crop.” The practice may be modified according to the size of estate by selecting more than one plant each year, but the principle remains unaltered. This method is in actual use by growers of Sea Island cotton in America and in the islands off the coast of S. Carolina; the greatest care is taken to enhance the quality of the lint, which has been gradually improved in length, fineness and silkiness. Mr Webber, in summing up, says, “When Sea Island cotton was first introduced into the United States from the West Indies, it was a perennial plant, unsuited to the duration of the season of the latitude of the Sea Islands of S. Carolina; but, through the selection of seed from early maturing individual plants, the cotton has been rendered much earlier, until now it is thoroughly adapted to the existing conditions. The fibre has increased in length from about 1¾ to 2½ in., and the plants have at the same time been increased in productiveness. The custom of carefully selecting the seed has grown with the industry and may be said to be inseparable from it. It is only by such careful and continuous selection that the staple of these high-bred strains can be kept up to its present superiority, and if for any reason the selection is interrupted there is a general and rapid decline in quality.”

When selection is being made for several characters at the same time, and also in hybridization experiments, where it is important to have full records of the characters of individual plants and their progeny, “score cards,” such as are used in judging stock, with a scale of points, are used.

The improvements desired in cotton vary to some degree in different countries, according to the present character of the plants, climatic conditions, the chief pests, special market requirements, and other circumstances. Amongst the more important desiderata are:—

1. Increased Yield.

2. Increase in Length of Lint.—Webber records the case of Stamm Egyptian cotton imported into Columbia, in which by simple selection, as outlined above, during two years plants were obtained uniformly earlier, more productive, and yielding longer and better lint.

3. Uniformity in Length of the Lint.—This is important especially in the long-stapled cottons, unevenness leading to waste in manufacture, and consequently to a lower price for the cotton.

4. Strength of Fibre.—Long-stapled cottons have been produced in the States by crossing Upland and Sea Island cotton. These hybrids produce a lint which is long and silky, but often deficient in strength: selection for strength amongst the hybrids, with due regard to length, may overcome this.

5. Season of Maturing.—Seed should be selected from early and late opening bolls, according to requirements. Earliness is especially important in countries where the season is short.

6. Adaptation to Soil and Climate.—High-class cottons often do not flourish if introduced into a new country. They are adapted to special conditions which are lacking in their new surroundings, but a few will probably do fairly well the first year, and the seeds from these probably rather better the next, and so on, so that in a few years’ time a strain may be available which is equal or even superior to the original one introduced.

7. Resistance to Disease.—The method employed is to select, for seed purposes, plants which are resistant to the particular disease. Thus sometimes a field of cotton is attacked by some disease, perhaps “wilt,” and a comparatively few plants are but very slightly affected. These are propagated, and there are instances as described above of very successful and commercially important results having been attained. Special interest attaches to experiments made in the United States to endeavour to raise races of cotton resistant to the boll weevil.

8. Resistance to Weather.—Strong winds and heavy rains do much damage to cotton by blowing or beating the lint out of the bolls. In some instances a slight difference in the shape, mode of opening, &c., of the boll prevents this, and accordingly seed is selected from bolls which suffer least under the particular adverse conditions.

Attention has been paid in the West Indies to seed selection, by the officers of the imperial Department of Agriculture, with the object of retaining for West Indian Sea Island cotton its place as the most valuable cotton on the British market.

In India, where conditions are much more diversified and it is more difficult to induce the native cultivator to adopt new methods, attention has also been directed during recent years to the improvement of the existing races. Efforts have been made in the same direction in Egypt, West Africa, &c.

The World’s Commercial Cotton Crop.

It is impossible to give an exact return of the total amount of cotton produced in the world, owing to the fact that in China, India and other eastern countries, in Mexico, Brazil, parts of the Russian empire, tropical Africa, &c., considerable—in some eases very large—quantities of cotton are made up locally into wearing apparel, &c., and escape all statistical record. It is estimated that the amount thus used in India exclusive of the consumption of mills is equivalent to about 400,000 bales. Neglecting, however, these quantities, which do not affect the world’s market, the annual supplies of cotton are approximately as follows:—

In 1905 the world’s crop closely approximated to 16,000,000 bales, whilst in 1904 it was nearly 19,000,000 bales and in 1906 nearly 20,000,000 bales. The United States produced very nearly seven-tenths of the total “visible” cotton crops of the world. This, however, is quite a modern development, comparatively speaking. “During the period from 1786 to 1790 the West Indies furnished about 70% of the British supply, the Mediterranean countries 20%, and Brazil 8%; whilst the quantity contributed by the United States and India was less than 1% and Egypt contributed none. In 1906 the United States contributed 65% of the commercial cotton, British India 19%, Egypt 7%, and Russia 3%. Of the countries which were prominent in the production of cotton in 1790, Brazil and Asiatic Turkey alone remain” (U.S.A. Bureau of the Census, Bulletin No. 76). The actual figures for the chief countries for 1904-1906, taken from the same source, are as follows:—

The World’s Commercial Cotton Crop. (In 500 ℔ Bales.)

This title serves to indicate the principal countries contributing to the world’s supply of cotton. The following notes afford a summary of the position of the industry in the more important countries.

United States of America.—The cultivation of cotton as a staple crop in the United States dates from about 1770,[1] although efforts appear to have been made in Virginia as far back as 1621. The supplies continued to be small up to the end of the century. In 1792 the quantity exported from the United States was only equivalent to 275 bales, but by the year 1800 it had increased to nearly 36,000 bales. At the close of the war in 1815 the revival of trade led to an increased demand, and the progress of cotton cultivation in America became rapid and continuous, until at length about 85% of the raw material used by English manufacturers was derived from this one source. With a capacity for the production of cotton almost boundless, the crop which was so insignificant when the century began had in 1860 reached the enormous extent of 4,824,000 bales. This great source of supply, when apparently most abundant and secure, was shortly after suddenly cut off, and thousands were for a time deprived of employment and the means of subsistence. In this period of destitution the cotton-growing resources of every part of the globe were tested to the utmost; and in the exhibition of 1862 the representatives of every country from which supplies might be expected met to concert measures for obtaining all that was wanted without the aid of America. The colonies and dependencies of Great Britain, including India, seemed well able to grow all the cotton that could be required, whilst numerous other countries were ready to afford their co-operation. A powerful stimulus was thus given to the growth of cotton in all directions; a degree of activity and enterprise never witnessed before was seen in India, Egypt, Turkey, Greece, Italy, Africa, the West Indies, Queensland, New South Wales, Peru, Brazil, and in short wherever cotton could be produced; and there seemed no room to doubt that in a short time there would be abundant supplies independently of America. But ten years afterwards, in the exhibition of 1872, which was specially devoted to cotton, a few only of the thirty-five countries which had sent their samples in 1862 again appeared, and these for the most part only to bear witness to disappointment and failure. America had re-entered the field of competition, and was rapidly gaining ground so as to be able to bid defiance to the world. True, the supply from India had been more than doubled, the adulteration once so rife had been checked, and the improved quality and value of the cotton had been fully acknowledged, but still the superiority of the produce of the United States was proved beyond all dispute, and American cotton was again king. Slave labour disappeared, and under new and more promising auspices a fresh career of progress began. With rare combination of facilities and advantages, made available with remarkable skill and enterprise, the production of cotton in America seems likely for a long series of years to continue to increase in magnitude and importance. The total area of the cotton-producing region in the States is estimated at 448,000,000 acres, of which in 1906 only about one acre in fifteen was devoted to cotton. The potentialities of the region are thus enormous.

Cotton is now the second crop of the United States, being surpassed in value only by Indian corn (maize). The area devoted to this crop in 1879 was 14,480,019 acres, and the total commercial crop was 5,755,359 bales. In 1899 the acreage had increased to 24,275,101 and the crop to 9,507,786 bales. In 1906 the total area was 28,686,000 acres and the crop 13,305,265 bales.

The preceding table gives the quantity, value and character of the crop for each of the cotton-growing states in 1906, as reported by the Bureau of the Census.

Mexico.—Cotton is extensively grown in Mexico, and large quantities are used for home consumption. The cultivation is of very old standing. Cortes in 1519 is said to have received cotton garments as presents from the natives of Yucatan, and to have found the Mexicans using cotton extensively for clothing. From 1900 to 1905 the crop was about 100,000 bales per annum; the whole is consumed in local mills, and cotton is imported also from the United States.

Brazil.—The cotton-growing region in Brazil comprises a belt some 200 m. in width, in the north-eastern portion of the country, and a strip along the valley of the San Francisco, where a large amount of the present crop is produced. The cotton is known in commerce under the name of the place of export, e.g. Maceio, Pernambuco or Pernam, Ceãra, Rio Grande, &c. The export fluctuates greatly.

The total production in 1906 was estimated at about 275,000 bales, but only a portion was available for export, there being an increasing consumption in Brazil itself.

Peru.—Cotton is an important crop in Peru, where it has long been cultivated. Most of the crop is grown in the irrigated coastal valleys. With more water available, the output could be considerably increased, e.g. in the Piura district. “Rough Peruvian,” the produce of one of the tree cottons, has a special use, as being rather harsh and wiry it is well adapted for mixing with wool. Egyptian cotton is also grown. The annual export is about 30,000 bales.

Cotton Production in the British West Indies: 1905-1906.[2]

British West Indies.—Cotton was cultivated as a minor crop in parts of the West Indies as long ago as the 17th century, and at the opening of the 18th century the islands supplied about 70% of all the cotton used in Great Britain. Greater profits obtained from sugar caused the industry to be abandoned, except in the small island of Carriacou. In 1900 the Imperial Department of Agriculture and private planters began experiments with the object of reintroducing the cultivation, owing to the decline in value of sugar. The department was actively assisted by the British Cotton Growing Association, and the results have been very successful, as was shown at an exhibition held in Manchester in 1908. A supply of seed of a high grade of Sea Island cotton was obtained from Colonel Rivers’s estate in the Sea Islands, S. Carolina, and so successful has the cultivation been that from some of the islands West Indian Sea Island cotton obtains a higher price than the corresponding grade of cotton from the Sea Islands themselves.

In 1902 the total area under cotton cultivation in the British West Indies was 500 acres. The industry made rapid progress. In 1903 it was 4000; in 1905-1906 it was 12,900; and for 1906-1907 it was 18,166 acres. The table indicates the chief cotton-producing islands, the acreage in each, yield, average value per pound and total value of the crop in 1905-1906.

The whole of this crop was Sea Island cotton, with the exception of the “Marie galante” grown in Carriacou. Marie galante is a harsh cotton of the Peruvian or Brazilian type. The low yield per acre in this island, and also the low value of the lint per ℔ compared with the Sea Island cotton, is clearly apparent.

In 1906-1907 the acreage was substantially increased in many of the islands, e.g. Barbados from 2000 to 5000; St Vincent 790 to 1533; St Kitts and Anguilla 1000 to 1500 each; Antigua 700 to 1883. In Jamaica, on the other hand, it was reduced from 1500 to 300 acres.

Spain.—Cotton was formerly grown in southern Spain on an extensive scale, and as recently as during the American Civil War a crop of 8000 to 10,000 bales was obtained. It is considered that with facilities for irrigation Andalusia could produce 150,000 bales annually. The former industry was abandoned as other crops became more remunerative. The government is encouraging recent efforts to re-establish the cultivation.

Malta.—Cotton has long been cultivated in Malta, but the acreage diminished from 1750 acres in 1899 to 670 acres in 1906. A considerable quantity of the produce is spun and woven locally; e.g. in 1904 the export was equivalent to about 120 bales out of a total production of 330 bales, and in 1905 to 258 out of 333 bales (of 500 ℔ each).

Cyprus has a soil and climate suited to cotton, which was formerly grown here on a large scale. The rainfall is uncertain and low, however, never exceeding 40 in., and on the supply of water by irrigation the future of the industry mainly depends. The exports dwindled from 3600 bales in 1865 to 946 in 1905; great fluctuations occur, the export in 1904, for example, being only 338 bales. The cotton grown is rather short-stapled and goes mainly to Marseilles and Trieste. Some is used locally in the manufacture of cloth.

Egypt.—The position of Egypt as the third cotton-producing country of the world has already been pointed out, and the varieties grown and the mode of cultivation described. The introduction of the exotic varieties dates from the beginning of the 19th century. The industry was actively promoted by a Frenchman named Jumel, in the service of Mehemet Ali, from 1820 onwards with great success. The area under cotton is about 1,800,000 acres.

Cotton Production in Egypt.

The Egyptian Sudan.—Egyptian cotton was cultivated in the Sudan to the extent of 21,788 acres in 1906 chiefly on non-irrigated land. The exports, however, are small, almost all the crop being used locally. The chief difficulties are the supply of water, labour and transport facilities. Lord Cromer in his report on the Sudan for 1906 remarks that: “There seems to be some reason for thinking that the future—or at all events the immediate future—of Sudan agriculture lies more in the direction of cultivating wheat and other cereals than in that of cultivating cotton.”

West Africa.—Cotton has long been grown in the various countries on the west coast of Africa, ginned by hand or by very primitive means, spun into yarn, and woven on simple looms into “country cloths”; these are often only a few inches wide, so that any large cloths have to be made by sewing the narrow strips together. These native cloths are exceedingly durable, and many of them are ornamented by using dyed yarns and in other ways.

Southern Nigeria (Lagos) and northern Nigeria are the most important cotton countries amongst the British possessions on the coast. From the former there has been an export trade for many years which fluctuates remarkably according to the demand. Northern Nigeria is the seat of a very large native cotton industry, to supply the demand for cotton robes for the Mahommedan races inhabiting the country. The province of Zaria alone is estimated to produce annually 30,000 to 40,000 bales, all of which is used locally. Northern Nigeria contributes to the cotton exported from Lagos. The country offers a fairly promising field for development, especially now that arrangements have been made for providing the necessary means of transport by the construction of the new railways. The profits obtained from ground-nuts (Arachis hypogea) in Gambia, gold mining in the Gold Coast, and from products of the oil palm (Elaeis guineensis) in the palm-oil belt serve to prevent much attention being given to cotton in these districts.

Exports of Cotton from Lagos.

Exports of Cotton from British West Africa, 1904, 1905 and 1906.

Nyasaland (British Central Africa).—The cultivation of cotton on a commercial scale is quite new in Nyasaland, and although general conditions of soil and climate appear favourable the question of transport is serious and labour is not abundant. The exports were equivalent to 2 bales of 500 ℔ in 1902-1903, 114 bales in 1903-1904, 570 bales in 1904-1905, 1553 bales in 1905-1906 and 1052 bales in 1906-1907. In the lower river lands Egyptian cotton has been the most successful, whilst Upland cotton is more suited to the highlands.

British East Africa and Uganda.—In these adjoining protectorates wild cottons occur, and suitable conditions exist in certain localities. Experimental work has been carried on, and in 1904 Uganda exported about 43 bales of cotton, and British East Africa about 177 bales. In 1906 the combined exports had risen to 362 bales, including a little from German East Africa. In 1904-1905 there were some 300 acres under cotton in British East Africa. Lack of direct transport facilities is a difficulty. Some of the native cottons are of fair quality, but Egyptian cotton appears likely to be best suited for growing for export.

India is probably the most ancient cotton-growing country. For five centuries before the Christian era cotton was largely used in the domestic manufactures of India; and the clothing of the inhabitants then consisted, as now, chiefly of garments made from this vegetable product. More than two thousand years before Europe or England had conceived the idea of applying modern industry to the manufacture of cotton, India had matured a system of hand-spinning, weaving and dyeing which during that vast period received no recorded improvement. The people, though remarkable for their intelligence whilst Europe was in a state of barbarism, made no approximation to the mechanical operations of modern times, nor was the cultivation of cotton either improved or considerably extended. Possessing soil, climate and apparently all the requisite elements from nature for the production of cotton to an almost boundless extent, and of a useful and acceptable quality, India for a long series of years did but little towards supplying the manufactures of other countries with the raw material which they required. Between the years 1788 and 1850 numerous attempts were made by the East India Company to improve the cultivation and to increase the supply of cotton in India, and botanists and American planters were engaged for the purpose. One great object of their experiments was to introduce and acclimatize exotic cottons. Bourbon, New Orleans, Upland, Georgia, Sea Island, Pernambuco, Egyptian, &c., were tried but with little permanent success. The results of these and similar attempts led to the conclusion that efforts to improve the indigenous cottons were most likely to be rewarded with success. Still more recently, however, experiments have been made to grow Egyptian cotton in Sind with the help of irrigation. Abassi has given the best results, and the experiments have been so successful that in 1904-1905 an out-turn of not less than 100,000 bales “was prophesied in the course of a few years” (Report of Director, Land Records and Agriculture). The average annual production in India approximates to 3,000,000 bales. The area under cotton in all British India is about 20,000,000 acres, the crop being grown in a very primitive manner. The bulk of the cotton is of very short staple, about three-quarters of an inch, and is not well suited to the requirements of the English spinner, but very large mills specially fitted to deal with short-stapled cottons have been erected in India and consume about one-half the total crop, the remainder being exported to Germany and other European countries, Japan and China. In 1906 the United Kingdom took less than 5% of the cotton exported.

Cotton Production in British India.[3]

About 50% of the cotton produced is consumed in Indian mills and the remainder is exported.

China.—Cotton has not been cultivated in China from such early times as in India, and although cotton cloths are mentioned in early writings it was not until about A.D. 1300 that the plant was grown on any considerable scale. There are no figures obtainable as to the production, but it must be very large, considering that the crop provides clothing for a large proportion of the population of China. During recent years a considerable quantity of cotton has been exported, but more than a compensating amount of raw cotton, yarns and textiles, is imported. An estimate of the crop puts it at about 1,500,000 bales.

Korea is stated to have originally received its cotton plants from China some 500 years ago. Conditions are well adapted to the cultivation of the plant, and since the cessation of the Russo-Japanese War the Japanese have undertaken the development of the industry. Figures are difficult to obtain, but an official report from the Japanese Residency General in 1907 estimated the crop at about 214,000 bales, all being used locally. In the future Korea may become an important source of supply for Japan, especially if, as appears likely, Korea proves suited to the cultivation of American cotton.

Japan received cotton from India before China, and the plant is extensively grown, especially in West and Middle Japan. The production is not sufficient to meet the home demand; during the five years of normal trade before the war with Russia Japan imported annually about 800,000 bales of cotton, chiefly from British India, China and the United States, and during the same period exported each year some 2000 bales, mainly to Korea.

Dutch East Indies.—In Java and other Dutch possessions in the East cotton is cultivated. A considerable amount is used locally, and during the six years ending in 1907 the surplus exported ranged from about 24,000 to 40,000 bales per annum.

Russia.—Some cotton is produced in European Russia in the southern Caucasus, but Turkestan in central Asia is by far the more important source of Russian-grown cotton. In this region cotton has been cultivated from very early times to supply local demands, and to a minor degree for export. Since about 1875 the Russians have fostered the industry, introducing American Upland varieties, distributing seed free, importing gins, providing instruction, and guaranteeing the purchase of the crops. The Trans-Caspian railway has been an important factor; almost all the cotton exported passes over this line, and the statistics of this trade indicate the progress made. The shipments increased from 250,978 bales in 1896-1897 to 495,962 bales in 1901-1902—part, however, being Persian cotton. The production of cotton in Russia in 1906 was estimated at 675,000 bales of 500 ℔ each. About one-third of the cotton used in Russian mills is grown on Russian territory, the remainder coming chiefly from the United States.

Asia Minor.—Smyrna is the principal centre of cotton cultivation in this region. A native variety known as “Terli,” and American cotton, are grown. The general conditions are favourable. According to the Liverpool Cotton Gazette, Asiatic Turkey produced in 1906 about 100,000 bales, and Persia about 47,000 bales. Cotton was formerly cultivated profitably in Palestine.

Australasia.—The quantity of cotton now produced in Australasia is extremely small. Queensland, New South Wales and South Australia possess suitable climatic conditions, and in the first-named state the cotton has been grown on a commercial scale in past years, the crop in 1897 being about 450 bales. Considerable interest attaches to the “Caravonica” cotton raised in South Australia, which has been experimented with in Australia, Ceylon and elsewhere. It is probably a hybrid between Sea Island and rough Peruvian cotton, but lacks most of the essential features of Sea Island.

In Fiji the cotton exported in the ’sixties and ’seventies was worth £93,000 annually; but the cultivation has been practically abandoned. In 1899 about 60 bales, and in 1900 about 6 bales, were exported. During 1901-1903 there were no exports of cotton, and in 1904 only 70 bales were sent out.

Into the Society Islands Sea Island cotton was introduced about 1860-1870. Up to the year 1885 there was an average yearly export equivalent to about 2140 bales of 500 ℔, after which date the export practically ceased. The industry has, however, been revived, and in 1906 over 100 bales, valued at £1052, were exported.

(W. G. F.)

Marketing and Supply

In the days of slave-grown cotton, the American planters, being men of wealth farming on a large scale, consigned the bulk of their produce as a rule direct to the ports. Now, however, a large proportion of the crop is sold to local Moving the harvest to the ports. store-keepers who transfer it to exporting firms in neighbouring cities. The cultivators, whether owners of the plantations, as is usual in some districts, or tenants, as is customary in others, are financed as a rule by commission agents. The decline of “spot” sales at the ports, partly but not entirely in consequence of the appearance of the small cultivator, has proceeded steadily. Hammond[4] has constructed a table from information supplied by the secretaries of the cotton exchanges at New York, Charleston, Savannah, Mobile, New Orleans and Galveston, showing the sales of “spot” cotton at those ports for the twenty-two years between 1874-1875 and 1895-1896, and in all cases an absolute decline is evident. The receipts of cotton in the season 1904-1905 at the leading interior towns and ports of the United States are given below.

Receipts of Cotton at 28 Interior Towns.
(In Thousand Statistical Bales of 500 ℔ each.)

Galveston and Savannah have risen considerably in relative importance of late years.

Before the Civil War each planter would have his own gin-house. Now, however, ginning is a distinct business, and one gin will serve on an average about thirty farmers. Moveable gins were tried for a time in some places; they were Ginning and packing. dragged by traction engines from farm to farm, like threshing machines in parts of England, but the plan proved uneconomical because, among other reasons, farmers were not prepared to meet the cost of providing facilities for storing their cotton. In addition to the small country ginneries, large modern ginneries have now been set up in all the leading Southern market towns. The cotton is pressed locally and afterwards “compressed” into a very small compass. The bales are usually square, but cylindrical bales are becoming more common, though their cost is greater. In the latter, the cotton is arranged in the form of a rolled sheet or “lap.” Owing to complaints of the careless packing of American cotton, attention has been devoted of late to the improvement of the square bale.

London used to be the chief cotton port of England, but Liverpool had assumed undisputed leadership before the 19th century began. Some arrivals have been diverted to Manchester since the opening of the Manchester ship English ports of entry. canal; shipments through the canal from the 1st of September to the 30th of August in each year for the decade 1894-1895 to 1904-1905 are appended—six to eight times as much is still unloaded at Liverpool.

A Manchester cotton-importing company was recently formed for increasing deliveries direct to Manchester, and establishing a “spot” market there, an end to which the Manchester Cotton Association had directed its efforts for some time past. The latter association was established at the end of 1894, with a membership of 265, in the interests of those spinners who desired importations direct to Manchester. The objects of the association are officially stated to be: (1) to frame suitable and authoritative forms of contract, and to make rules and regulations for the proper conduct of the trade; (2) to supervise and facilitate the delivery of the importations of cotton at the Manchester docks to the various consignees; (3) to provide and maintain trustworthy standards of classification; (4) to procure and disseminate useful information on all subjects pertaining to the trade; (5) to act in concert with chambers of commerce and other bodies throughout the world for mutual protection; (6) to establish a market for cotton at Manchester. Spinning members preponderate, but almost all the Manchester cotton merchants and cotton brokers have also joined the association. The importance of the original spinners’ representation on the association is shown by the fact that they worked over 14,000,000 spindles: in December 1905 the spindles represented by members had risen to nearly 20,000,000. Some 73,000 looms are also represented. As most of the Lancashire cotton mills lie far from Manchester, direct importations to that city do not usually dispense with a “handling,” and frequently save little or nothing in freight rates, though in some cases the economy derived from direct importation is considerable. One gain accruing to Lancashire from the Canal, however, is that its competition has brought down railway rates.

Fundamental alterations have been made in the structure of the leading cotton markets, and in methods of buying and selling cotton, in the last hundred years. We shall not attempt to trace the changes as they appeared in every market Cotton market methods. of importance, but shall confine our attention to one only, and that perhaps the most important of all, namely, the market at Liverpool. This selection of one market for detailed examination does not rob our sketch of generality, as might at first be thought, since broadly the history of the development of one market is the history of the development of all, and on the whole the economic explanation of the evolution that has taken place may be universalized.

Cotton landed at the Port of Manchester since the Canal was opened.
(In thousand Bales.)
The season is from the 1st of September to the 31st of August each year.

Originally cotton was imported by the Liverpool dealer as an agent for American firms or at his own risk, and then sold by private treaty, auction, or through brokers, to Manchester dealers, who retailed it to the spinners. Evolution of broking. This statement is, of course, only roughly correct. Some Manchester dealers imported themselves, and some spinners bought direct from Liverpool importers, but the rule was the arrangement first described. Early in the 19th century it became customary for Manchester dealers and Liverpool importers to carry on business with one another through representatives known as “buying” and “selling” brokers. About this time the broker of cotton only began to specialize from the ranks of the brokers who dealt in all kinds of colonial produce. Previously there had not been enough business done in cotton to make it worth any person’s while to devote himself to the buying and selling on commission of cotton only. The evolution of the distinct business of cotton broking is readily comprehensible when we remind ourselves that the requirements, as regards raw material, of all spinners are much alike generally, and that no spinner could afford to pay an expert to devote himself entirely to purchasing cotton for his mill.

So far change had been gradual, but the success of the Manchester and Liverpool railway undermined beyond repair the old system of doing business. Spinners could easily run over to Liverpool and buy their cotton from the large stocks displayed at that port. Before the railway was opened some spinners had been in the habit of making their purchases of raw material in Liverpool, but the great inconveniences of the journey, combined with less easy terms for payment than were usual in Manchester, prevented any great numbers from departing from the beaten track. Cotton dealers up to this time had regularly financed the spinners, who were frequently men of little capital, by allowing long credit, and had even employed them to spin on commission. As men of substance increased among the ranks of the spinners, the Manchester cotton dealers found it impossible to retard a movement set on foot by the prospects of such appreciable advantages. Ultimately many of the old Manchester cotton dealers became brokers for their old customers. In 1875 there were said to be upwards of 100 cotton dealers in Manchester, but from that time onward their members steadily declined. It is interesting to observe that a later development of transport between Manchester and Liverpool, namely, the Manchester Ship Canal, has drawn back into Manchester a part of the cotton market which was attracted from Manchester into Liverpool by the famous improvement in transport opened to the public three-quarters of a century ago.

The centralization of the cotton market in Liverpool fixed firmly the system of buying through brokers, for the Liverpool importer, or his broker, was in no sense a professional adviser to the spinners, informally pledged to advance the latter’s interests, as the old Manchester dealers had been. The system was rendered comparatively inexpensive by the drop in commissions from 1 to ½ % which had followed the adoption of selling by sample. This custom of buying and selling through brokers continued unshaken until the laying of the Atlantic cable tempted selling brokers occasionally, and even some buying brokers, to buy direct from American factors by telegraph and thus transform themselves into quasi-importers. The temptation was made the more difficult to resist by the development of “future” dealings. When the agents of the spinners, that is, the buying brokers, by becoming principals in some transactions, had acquired interests diametrically opposed to those of their customers, the consequent feeling of distrust among spinners gave birth to the Cotton Buying Company, which, constituted originally of twenty to thirty limited cotton-spinning companies, represents to-day nearly 6,000,000 spindles distributed among nearly one hundred firms. Its object was to squeeze out some middlemen and economize for its members on brokerage. This company, it is said, helped to attract the brokers back to the spinners, and an informal understanding was arrived at that the buying broker should not figure both as agent and principal in the same transaction.

By 1876 “forward” operations had become so vast and complicated that a cotton-clearing house had to be established to deal with the confusing networks of debits and credits created by them. Its principle was exactly Cotton-Clearing house, Cotton Bank and periodic settlement of “differences.” that of the clearing houses used by the railways and the banks, the cancellation of indebtedness and discharge simply of balances. The final settlement of a “future” contract involved usually a crowd of persons, and the passage of large sums of money backwards and forwards, so that the amount of cash required for circulation on the exchange became unreasonably excessive and an annoying waste of time was entailed. The cotton-clearing house substituted book-keeping for the bulk of these payments. The establishment of the Cotton Bank naturally followed. Now debts are discharged in the first instance by vouchers. Dealers pass their debit and credit vouchers into the Cotton Bank and pay or receive the balances which they owe or are entitled to. In order to protect dealers against the losses due to the insolvency of those with whom they have had transactions, weekly settlements on the exchange have been made compulsory; between brokers and their clients they are also usual. At the settlement, every member of the exchange receives the “differences” owing to him and pays those which he has incurred. Thus if a person holds futures for 10,000 bales which stood at 5.20 on the last settlement day and now stand at 5.30, and in the course of the previous week has sold 5000 bales of “futures” at 5.10, he receives 10,000 × 10⁄100d. on his old holding, and has to pay 5000 × 20⁄200d. on his sales, and therefore on balance neither receives nor pays. Differences may be very large sums. The unit of a “future” being 100 bales, an alteration in the price of cotton of .01d. causes a difference on each unit of £2. Periodic settlements are obviously periodic tests of the solvency of dealers. If the test of the settlement were not frequently applied, speculators who were unfortunate would be tempted to plunge deeper until finally some became insolvent for large sums. As it is, the speculator who has incurred losses beyond his means tends to be discovered before his creditors are heavily involved. Settlement days fall on Thursday, and the closing prices on the preceding Monday are taken as the basis of the settlement. From all differences interest at 5% is deducted for the time between settlement day and the tenth day of the second month on which the “future” elapses, since settlement terms mean that money is paid in instalments before it is actually due. To the admission of periodic settlements there was for a time vehement opposition on the ground that the door would be opened to gambling on “differences.” Hence at first, in 1882, they were used only by a section of the market constituted of members who had voluntarily agreed to do business with one another upon these terms alone. By 1884, however, the advantages of “settlement terms” became so evident that they were adopted by the Cotton Association, at first for fortnightly periods, with the saving clause originally that they should not be compulsory.

As soon as the clearing house was set up it became evident that “futures” were an impossibility away from it. At the same time “futures” were becoming an increasing necessity to importers, because through “futures” alone could they Origin of Liverpool Cotton Association. hedge on their purchases of cotton, or buy when the market seemed favourable, and they were not prepared to assume heavy risks. Now from the clearing house importers were rigorously excluded, and on invoking the aid of “futures,” therefore, they were penalized to the extent of double broker’s commission, one commission being charged on the sale of the “futures” and one on their purchase back. The importers, therefore, found it necessary to establish a club of their own, the Liverpool Cotton Exchange, which they as rigorously guarded against brokers. The split in the market so caused was so damaging to both parties that a satisfactory arrangement was eventually agreed upon, and both institutions were absorbed in the Liverpool Cotton Association.

A condition of specialist dealers working to the public service is that they should not act in the dark. They must watch demand, be able to form reasonable anticipations of its movements, and at the same time know the existing stocks of cotton, Publication of information relating to demand and supply. the sales taking place from day to day, and the best forecasts of the coming supplies. A man accustomed to devote the whole of his time to the study of demand and supply in relation to cotton, after some years of experience, will be qualified ordinarily to form fairly accurate judgments of the prices to be expected. His success depends upon his ability to interpret rightly the facts and intangible signs with which he is brought in contact. The information at the disposal of dealers has steadily enlarged in volume and improved in trustworthiness, though some of it is not yet invariably above suspicion, and the time elapsing between an event and the knowledge of it becoming common property has been reduced to a fraction of what it used to be, in consequence chiefly of the telegraph and cables. All sales that take place on the Exchange must be returned. Estimates are published of the area under cotton cultivation, and conditions of the American crop are issued by the American agricultural bureau at the beginning of the months of June, July, August, September and October of each year. To represent the standard of perfect healthiness and exemption from injury due to insects, or drought, or any other causes, one hundred is taken. The estimates for 1901 to 1905 are given, to illustrate their variations:—

These estimates are the averages of separate estimates which are published for the states of North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, Tennessee. The official figures are supplemented from time to time by numerous private forecasts, for instance those in “Neild’s circular.” Ellison, in his work on the cotton trade of Great Britain, traces in detail the increase in the volume of information collected and made public. At the close of the 18th century there was a tacit understanding among brokers to supply one another with information. There were no printed circulars, except the monthly prices current of all kinds of produce, but brokers used to send particulars of business done to their customers in letters. These letters were the origin of circulars. Messrs Ewart and Rutson pioneered in 1805 by issuing a weekly account of the sales and imports of cotton, and three years later three such circulars were on the market, though Hope’s alone was confined to cotton. For the first associated circular of any importance, the market had to wait until 1832. The issue of this circular by subscribing firms, on the basis of particulars collected by brokers appointed at a weekly meeting, gave rise in 1841 to the Cotton Brokers’ Association, to which the development of the market by the systematizing of procedure is largely due. The rest of the tale may be told in Mr Ellison’s own words:—

“Down to 1864 the leading firms continued to issue weekly market reports, but in that year the association commenced the publication of an associated circular. This was followed in the same year by the Daily Table of sales and imports, which in 1874 was succeeded by the present more complete Daily Circular. To these publications were at various times added the annual report, issued in December, the American crop report, issued in September, and the daily advices by cable from America, issued every morning.”[5]

We shall now enter upon a detailed analysis of “forward” operations. The term “futures” is used broadly and narrowly: broadly it is a generic term denoting “futures” in the narrow sense, and also “options” and “straddles”; Futures. narrowly it implies merely contracts for future delivery at a price fixed in the present. Again we must distinguish between the “future” contracts for the delivery of a particular kind of cotton, which may be entered into by spinners and their brokers, and are real purchases in the sense that the spinners want delivery of the cotton referred to, and the “futures,” which always relate to the same grade of cotton, and are drawn up according to certain forms and circulate on the exchange as media for the shifting of risks connected with purchase and sale. The latter are not “real” purchases in the sense given to that term above, but fictitious because delivery of the cotton is not desired. It will no doubt aid the understanding of the functions of the latter if some explanation is offered of the needs met by the former, which are sometimes known technically as “deferred deliveries.”

When a spinner is required to quote prices of yarn for delivery in the future he is fixed on the horns of a dilemma. If he does not at once buy cotton, but quotes on the assumption that price will remain steady, he may be involved in serious The spinner’s risks. loss through his estimate being mistaken. If he determines to buy cotton at once, others who risk more, and trust their judgment of the future, may secure the contract. On first thoughts it would seem desirable that all spinners should buy cotton outright to cover their contracts, but on second thoughts the social disadvantage of their doing so becomes apparent. Much buying might take place when stocks were scanty, with the result that prices would be needlessly forced up; and when stocks were plentiful demand might be weak and prices, therefore, be unduly depressed. It is evident that the buying of cotton on the principles suggested would be calculated to cause great unsteadiness of prices, especially as cotton is not continuously forthcoming, but is produced periodically in harvests. Demands for yarn cannot be expected to come always at the most favourable time socially for the distribution of the cotton. One way out of the difficulty is that the spinner should exercise his judgment and buy his raw material at what seems to him the most suitable times. But to this course there are three objections. The first is that spinners would be performing the two functions of industrial management and cotton buying (together with others perhaps), and that in consequence the best industrial men would not necessarily be able to maintain their position in the trade because as buyers of cotton they might be unfortunate. The second is that spinners being required to give attention to two distinct classes of problems would be less likely as a body to become complete masters of either. The third, which is not distinct in principle from the two preceding, is that such limited speculation in cotton buying on the part of spinners worried with other matters would not be likely to steady the cotton market in any high degree. It may be assumed as desirable that the demand for cotton should be so spread as to keep its price as steady as possible—“steadiness” will be defined more exactly later—and that to this end it is essential that specialists should devote themselves to the task of spreading it. Such specialists have appeared in the cotton brokers and dealers who make their living out of bearing the risks connected with anticipating demand and supply in relation to cotton. To-day a spinner who is asked to quote for deliveries of yarn for, say, the next six months, may obtain from a broker quotations for deliveries of the cotton that he needs, in quantities as he needs it, for the next six months, and upon these quotations he may base his own for yarn. If a spinner is pressed by a shipper to make quotations with refusal for two or three days to give time for business to be settled by cable, it is evidently not impossible for the spinner to shift the risk involved by getting in turn from his broker refusal quotations for cotton. But spinners do not try always to take the safest course.

Now it is evident that brokers in turn require some means of passing on the risks that they are bearing, or some portion of them from one to another, or of sharing them with other market experts, as they find themselves overburdened, Method of distributing risks. and as their judgment of the situation changes. The means have been provided in the “futures” which circulate on the Cotton Exchange. The risks of anticipating are carried by those who create or hold “futures” without a hedge. In order to facilitate business, “futures” are all drawn in the same unit (100 bales), and are all based on the same class of cotton, namely Upland cotton of middling grade of “no staple” (i.e. with a fibre of about ¾ in.) and of the worst growth. American cotton, we may remind the reader, is graded into a number of classes, both on the Liverpool and New York Exchanges, and an attempt is made in each market to keep the grades as fixed as possible. But what, it may be inquired, is the value of “futures” relating to “middling” cotton to a broker whose contracts with spinners are not in “middling” cotton? The answer is that though the ratios between the prices of the various grades alter, the prices of all of them move generally together, and that the “futures” of the Exchange at least provide a hedge against the latter movements. Other things being equal, the broker would be better off if he could hedge with equal ease against all his risks. But other things are not equal: the market would be more confusing and quotations would be complicated if “futures” were in use for all grades.

We may now examine the exchange “futures” in minuter detail. They are quoted as a rule for about ten months ahead. Thus in January the futures quoted will be January (technically termed “current,” “present month” or Characteristics of “futures.” “near month,” “futures”), January-February, February-March, March-April, April-May, May-June, June-July, July-August, and perhaps two or three more. Each group, it will be observed, except “current futures,” culminates in two defined months. The rule is that on the first of the two months the seller of “futures” may, and before the last day of the second month must, deliver cotton against them, or, what comes to the same thing, buy back the “futures” on the basis of the price of “spot” cotton of middling grade. Various grades of cotton are tenderable against “futures”: if this were not so “futures” would be in danger of defeating their object, because the price of the grade upon which they were founded would probably at times be thrown widely out of relation to the general level of prices in the cotton market. The lowest grade tenderable used to be “low middling,” but since October 1901 “good ordinary” has also been accepted. Arbitrators report on deliveries and award allowances on those of grades above “middling” and deductions of price from those below. A sample is taken from each bale and the “points on or off” are fixed for each bale separately. If either party is dissatisfied with the award, he may appeal to an appeals committee on paying £3:3:0: which is refunded to him by the other party if the appeal be upheld. The detailed arrangements described above are those of the Liverpool market. The great bulk of “futures,” however, are bought back and not delivered against.

Beneath are the official Liverpool quotations of Quotations. “futures,” as they appeared on the morning of the 19th of April 1906:—

American Deliveries, any port, basis of middling, good ordinary clause (the fractions are given in 100ths of a penny).

Egyptian Deliveries, fully good fair (in 64ths of a penny).

Egyptian futures, it will be observed, run out in single months. As the cost of dealing in “futures” is only one shilling on each transaction for a member of the Cotton Exchange (the outsider is charged in addition a commission by his broker), it is not surprising that the transactions taking place in “futures” number legion.

The methods of dealing in cotton are very intricate, and it is necessary here to interpolate an explanation of the relations between the prices paid by spinners for cotton and the quoted “spot” prices. We begin by giving the official quotations of “spot,” and statement of business done, published on the morning of the 19th of April 1906.

Cotton Ships arrived.
Boston: Canadian S. Hamburg: Iceland S.

Purchases for “speculation” remain in the market and therefore figure again in the sales. These official prices are sometimes prices actually paid, and sometimes prices settled by a committee according to their notions of the prices that would “Points on or off.” have been realized at the close of the market had business been done. The work of the committee is by no means simple, as frequently very few transactions take place in the kinds of cotton of which quotations are given. As regards “middling” American, the committee fixes “spot” by allowing so many “points on or off” present month futures. The variations of the gaps between “spot” and “present month futures” are somewhat mysterious, a matter to which we shall recur. “Spot” quotations, the reader will now understand, are partly nominal, and must therefore be taken as affording a general idea only of movements in the prices of cotton. While quoted “spot” remained low, the prices paid by most spinners for the special kinds of cotton that they needed might rise. When the spinner has informed the dealer exactly what quality of cotton he needs, the dealer quotes so many “points on or off” the “future” quotations prevailing in Liverpool at the time of the purchase, which refer to Upland cotton of “middling grade,” of “no staple” and of the worst growth. Then, according as the spinner wants immediate delivery or delivery in some future month, he pays the price of current “futures,” or of “futures” of the month in which he requires delivery, plus or minus the “points on or off” previously fixed.

The considerations which determine the “points on or off” charged to the spinner may be taken roughly as three:—

1. The grade, i.e. the colour, cleanliness, &c., of the cotton. These are of importance to the spinner owing to the necessity of his cleaning machinery being adapted to the condition of the cotton. The lower the grade the more elaborate and expensive is the machinery required to clean it, and consequently a spinner is willing to pay a certain amount extra for high grade cotton in order to save expenditure on preparatory machinery.

2. The length of the staple. This determines to a large extent the fineness of the yarn which can be spun. Only the very lowest counts can be spun from cotton with “no staple,” that is, with a fibre of about three-quarters of an inch. The longer the staple above the minimum the higher the counts that can be spun.

3. The growth. The best American cotton (Sea Island and Florida cotton are always considered quite apart) is grown in the Mississippi valley, the next best in Texas, and the poorest on the Uplands (i.e. in Georgia and Alabama). Considerations of growth determine to a great extent the hardness or softness, and strength or weakness, of the fibre, and thus, indirectly, whether the cotton is suitable for warp or weft.

Some spinners cover their yarn contracts merely by buying “futures,” but the cover thus provided is frequently most inadequate owing to variations in the “points on or off” for the particular cotton that they want. For example, after the size of 1904-1905 crops became known, and the Americans attempted to hold back cotton, the “points on” for many qualities rose considerably owing to artificial scarcity, though the price of cotton, as indicated by “spot,” remained low. There is a tendency for cautious spinners in England to run no risks and fix the prices of their yarn in accordance with quotations for actual cotton of specified qualities made by their brokers.

We now return to exchange “future” transactions regarded as a genus. In addition to “futures” proper there are “options” and “straddles.” Options are single (“puts” or “calls”) or double (that “Options” and “straddles.” is, alternative “puts” or “calls”). The “put” is a right to sell cotton within some specified time in the future at a price fixed in the present, which need not, of course, be exercised. The “call” is similar, but relates to buying. It will be evident that the “put” is a hedge against prices falling, and the “call” a hedge against their rising. The basis of “options” is the same as that of ordinary “futures,” i.e. middling American cotton of “no staple,” &c. Whether the purchaser of an option gains or loses depends upon the price that he has paid in relation to the gain, if any, that he makes out of his power. The price of options of course varies: that of double options is always highest, but they are little used. A “straddle” is a speculation on the difference between the prices of nearer and more distant futures, which varies from time to time, or on the difference between the prices of different kinds of cotton. An example will make the nature of the straddle clear. Suppose a dealer buys April-May “futures” at 4d. a ℔ and sells the same quantity of May-June “futures” at 410⁄64d. a ℔. Then, whether prices rise or fall as a whole, he gains if the difference between the two prices becomes less than 10⁄64d., but if it becomes more, he loses. On the other hand, had the dealer bought May-June at 410⁄64d. and sold April-May at 4d. he would have gained in the event of the difference increasing, and lost in the event of its decreasing.

A question which has met with a good deal of attention is whether the speculation, which has been encouraged by the various arrangements made for facilitating operations in “futures,” has steadied or unsteadied prices. Measures of steadiness in prices. Before we are prepared to answer this question we must be furnished with a precise conception of what is meant by “steadiness” in prices. It is sometimes assumed that this is measured perfectly by the standard deviation,[6] which is obtained by taking the squares of the differences between the average and the individual prices, summing them and extracting the square root. But obviously the information given by the standard deviation is limited: the frequency of movement cannot be inferred from it; two series might have quite different average oscillations and yet the same standard deviation; and the range of movement, or spread of the variations from the average price (though allowed for in the standard deviation more than in the average error), is hidden. Now frequency of movement, average daily price variation, and range of price movements are matters of fundamental importance to the public. Hence for practical purposes we require several kinds of measurement of price movements, and it is impossible to weigh exactly the one against the other in respect of importance. Observe that an increase of the frequency of movement, or even of the average daily movement, is not necessarily objectionable, since changes are less harassing when they take place by small increments than when they are brought about by a few big variations. The difference between the highest and lowest price, we may observe, is a very imperfect indication of the range of movement (though, taken in conjunction with the standard deviation, it is the best at our disposal), because either of the extreme prices might be accidental and quite out of relation to all others. An investigator must be on his guard against using quotations of this kind. There is also a difficulty about the frequency of movement, because as a rule many movements take place in one day the total over a period sufficiently lengthy to yield general results is enormous, and many are unrecorded. In one day, for instance, when the net drop was 33 points and the range of variation 59 points (namely, 8.45 to 7.86), 150 price fluctuations were recorded. However, the count of frequency of movement from daily closing prices would probably afford a roughly satisfactory comparative measurement in markets in which prices sometimes remain the same for a day or two together. The points just noted apply also to the average fluctuation and the standard deviation, but it is probable in these cases that daily or even weekly quotations would be sufficient to yield the information sought for with sufficient exactness for purposes of comparison.

Now, supposing dealing to be confined to experts, what effects upon the course of prices would one expect from the specialism of the cotton market and improved facilities for dealing, on the assumption that dealers were Effect of speculation on steadiness of prices. governed wholly in their actions by the course of prices and never tried to manipulate them? The frequency of movement ought to increase because the market would become more sensitive, but, other things being equal, the range of movement ought to diminish, and ultimately the average daily movement also, though at first the latter might not fall appreciably if, indeed, it did not rise, owing to the increased frequency of movement. These results would prove beneficial to the community. May we infer deductively that they have been attained because of the increase of speculative transactions? By no means, and for two reasons. In the first place, the public speculates to a large extent on the cotton exchange, and its speculation (taken as a whole) is sheer gambling. But, it may be replied, the outsiders, being as a whole completely ignorant of the forces at work, so that they cannot form rational anticipations, cannot have any effect either way: by the law of chance their influences would neutralize one another. This would be so if people acted independently and without guidance, but actually they are sometimes misled by published advice and movements in the market intended to deceive them, and, even when they are not, they watch each other’s attitudes and tend to act as a crowd. The mass becomes unduly sanguine or weakly surrenders to panic. Hence the law of error does not apply, and speculation by the public may unsteady prices. Again, dealers sometimes try to create corners and form powerful syndicates for that purpose: the dealing syndicate of late years has become a force to be reckoned with. Many large-scale operations are entered into, not because prices are relatively high or low, but to make them high or low for ulterior purposes; i.e. the market is deliberately “bulled or beared.” In consequence of this tampering with the market no certainty can be felt about the effect even of expert dealing.