cotton fabrics that the supply of cotton must of necessity be increased to meet the demand. Hand picking and crude implements for separating the fibre from the seed had about reached the limit of their ability to supply the market when WHITNEY'S sawgin (1793) rendered it possible to meet the increased demand and the American production was increased more than 1100 per cent. in ten years. By the steady advance in the efficiency of machinery, the extension of the cotton area and better methods of cultivation, the annual cotton crop of the United States is now nearly 11,000,000 bales of 400 pounds cach. India produces about 3,000,000 bales a year and Egypt a little less than 1,000,000 bales. During the Civil war, when exportation of cotton from this country was shut off and the price jumped from 13 cents a pound in 1861 to over a dollar a pound in 1864, great efforts were made in many countries to build up a cotton trade that would eventually supplant the American. So long as prices were abnormally high, cotton was grown in the whole Mediterranean region, Indian production was stimulated, and Australia was lauded as the future empire of King Cotton, but with the return of peace the planters repaired to their plantations and within less than ten years we were exporting more than before and at the same time home consumption had increased with even greater rapidity. The United States thus quickly reasserted her supremacy in cotton production. Can she maintain it in the future? For the near future she unquestionably can if she so desires, but it must be recognized that Brazil and Mexico on this continent have vast possibilities if properly developed, and the Dark Continent may learn to utilize the vast areas of agricultural lands said to exist in the Soudan and elsewhere. Asiatic Russia is advancing rapidly and the production there has increased so that Russian imports have fallen off 50 per cent. in ten years. These countries together with Egypt and India, to say nothing of the unknown possibilities of regions south of the equator, may in time compete closely with us in production of raw cotton, but perhaps by that time the whir of countless spindles and the hum of many looms may take the place of the shout and song of the field hand and this country become the cotton manufacturer for the world. The PRESIDENT. There is opportunity for any who are interested in this subject to ask any questions of Dr. EVANS. Shall we proceed to the next paper? American-grown Egyptian Cotton, by Mr. LYSTER H. DEWEY, of the United States Department of Agriculture. [Applause.] AMERICAN-GROWN EGYPTIAN COTTON. ORIGIN. Nearly all of the fifteen or twenty varieties of cotton now cultivated commercially in Egypt have been developed more or less directly from the Sea Island cotton of this country. One or two varieties are said to have been obtained from cotton grown in India, but these have doubtless been cross-fertilized with pollen from other Egyptian varieties giving a strain of the Sea Island type. Although different varieties of Egyptian cottan differ from each other in habit of plant and character of lint quite as much as do the different varieties of American upland cotton, they all exhibit in a more or less marked degree characters akin to those of the Sea Island cotton. DESCRIPTION OF PLANTS. The plants are generally large with long graceful limbs. The flowers are large, of a beautiful yellow color, remaining half expanded in the form of a bell. They are followed by comparatively small bolls, which in nearly all cases are only "threelocked", that is, have only three cells or parts to the seed-pod, instead of five, the usual number in the bolls of our upland The seeds are black or coffee colored and nearly free from adherent fuzz, except a tuft of green at one end in some varieties. In all of these characters Egyptian cotton resembles Sea Island cotton, indicating plainly their close relationship. cotton. An examination of five living plants, taken this morning from the trial grounds of the Department of Agriculture on the Potomac flats, will bring out more clearly some of the differences between American upland, Sea Island and Egyptian cottons. This plant, eight feet high, limbless, and bearing bolls in pairs or clusters is a typical specimen of an Egyptian variety called "Bamia". Among Egyptian cottons this variety is second only to "Mit-Afifi" represented by this shorter branching plant. Both of these plants are truly American-grown Egyptian cottons, being produced from seed acclimated by six successive generations of growth in Texas. There is a plant of " Mit-Afifi" produced from seed imported last spring from Egypt. You will observe that it can be scarcely distinguished from the plant of Texas Mit-Afifi and also that it closely resembles Sea Island, which isre presented by the "Black Rattler ", this slightly smaller plant, while it is quite different from this shorter but more stocky, branching plant of "Truitt's Improved ", representing the typical form of one of the leading varieties of American upland cotton. Please note the yellow bell-shaped flowers, the long leaves, and the small pointed bolls of the Egyptian and Sea Island varieties as compared with the white open flowers, broad leaves and large rounded bolls of the upland cotton. The limbs of Mit-Afifi and Sea Island would have been longer if the plants had been less crowded. This American upland plant has two open bolls. No open bolls are to be found yet on the fifteen varieties of Egyption cotton or the Sea Island cotton which we are growing on the Potomac flats. THE LINT. There are points of resemblance in the lint also, yet we find here greater diversity than elsewhere in the plants. The peculiar characters found in the lint have made Egyptian cottons a class by themselves. These peculiar characters of lint have made and maintained a market for it even here in the United States, the greatest cotton-growing country on the globe. Some mills even in the Southern States, literally surrounded with great cotton plantations, are importing from Egypt, cotton for use in the manufacture of special kinds of goods. The lint, averaging about 1.4 inches in length, is about 0.2 inches shorter than average Sea Island, and about 0.5 inch longer than the average American upland cotton. Several long staple cottons cultivated in this country exceed the Egyptian in length, and the Sea Island and long staple varieties usually exceed it in fineness. The characters that render it especially valuable are its strength, combined with softness, lustre, elasticity, its soft oily feeling, its ability to take dyes, and its well developed twist. Although resembling the lint of Sea Island cotton more than that of American upland, it has developed fixed characters which clearly distinguish it from the lint of any cotton grown on a commercial scale in this country. I will pass around some of the specimens of lint from central Arkansas and northern Georgia produced this season from seeds imported last spring. In this box is a sample of lint from plants of the sixth generation in America, raised by Mr. WENTWORTH in Texas. CONDITIONS IN EGYPT. These peculiar characteristics have been produced by many years of cultivation in Egypt, where the conditions are radically different from those in the cotton-growing states in this country. Nearly all the Egyptian cotton is grown in the Nile Delta between Cairo and Alexandria, and in the province of Fayoum on the west side of the Nile about forty miles above Cairo. It is all grown under irrigation. From the time the cotton plants are up in March until the last lint is picked in November there is practically no rain in Egypt. The annual rainfall at Cairo is only 1.5 inches, and at Alexandria on the coast only 7.8 inches. Nearly all of this rain comes during the winter months. The air is exceedingly dry. Even the records from Phoenix, Arizona, do not indicate a mean relative humidity as low as that in Egypt. The temperatures in Egypt usually exhibit a wider range between daily maximum and minimum, or the warmest part of the day and the coldest at night, but the average is not essentially differ |