been, the Lancashire Cotton-dealer, because
having insufficient thought for the future, he
sought out no fresh fields whence to obtain his
staple, and gave no encouragement to pastures
new in other parts of the tropics.

Again, two years later, we wrote, "The lives
of two millions of our countrymen are dependent
upon the cotton crop of America; their destiny
may be said, without any sort of hyperbole,
to hang upon a thread. Should, any dire
calamity befal the land of cotton, a thousand of
our merchant ships would rot idly in dock; ten
thousand mills must stay their busy looms; two
thousand, thousand mouths would starve for
lack of work to feed them."* Warnings such
as these, constantly repeated by other
journalists, were, it now appears, less heeded
than they ought to have been. No true blue
Englishman will ever own to being an alarmist,
as if the existence of anything alarming in
the world were an inadmissible statement, a
craven sentiment, which no man worthy of the
name of man would own. There are always,
moreover, a few loud-tongued men who are
ready to display their courage by denying danger,
and preventing precautions. They vaunt that
they can see no cause for despair until the
danger comes, and when the danger does
approach, they are the very persons whom panic
first seizes. Mill-horse advocates of this dangerous
kind even affected to believe that the cotton
supplies were in less danger than the supplies of
wool, and could be increased or diminished at
will, as if cotton plantations were as manageable
as flocks of domestic animals, and the hairs of
seeds could be as easily cleaned as the fleeces of
sheep. Neither was the lessening of slavery
(which their policy fostered) anything to them.

*Household Words, vol. v., p. 52.

The alarmists were not sufficiently heeded.
America, which supplied us with six hundred
and sixty thousand two hundred and seventy-
four hundred-weight of cotton in the month of
August, 1860, sent us four hundred and forty-
eight thousand and sixty-one in the same month
of this year showing a falling off amounting
to upwards of two hundred and twelve thousand
two hundred hundred-weight. American
cotton has recently been reshipped from Liverpool
for America.

Such are some of the effects of the beginning
of the war between North and South in
America upon our cotton supplies, and the
outlook is not improved by the taking of Port
Hatteras by the Federalists and the fleet which
has recently set out, with a roving commission
to stop every possible outlet for cargoes from a
vast extent of the south-country seaboard. The
deficiency in the supply, it is moreover worthy
of note, comes from the cause which, of all
others, was deemed the least likely to happen—a
disruption war in the United States. There
were, we are aware, among the public writers
accused of creating unnecessary alarm, men who
said the slavery question in the States might
end in a war of separation, just as the question
of the slave trade was at the bottom of the war
of American independence. But the war which
has actually broken out between men of one
language and lineage was long deemed too
horrible and fratricidal an occurrence to be
entertained as a probability by sane imaginations;
much less a war of tariffs, which the present
war undoubtedly is; slavery as its cause being
a false issue and a Northern pretext.

But other fears of failure or diminution were
stated. European experiences of the ravages
of the Oidium Tuckerii upon the vine, and
of the Aphis devastator upon the potato, and
of the Alucita upon the wheat plant,
suggested to most of the alarmists the
unanswerable argument that a caterpillar might, in
any one season, cause a dearth of cotton, and
ruin half Lancashire. An increase of threepence
upon the pound of cotton makes an
outgoingof twelve millions a year to the British
manufacturers. The word " calamity" signifies,
literally or philologically, a devastation by
locusts or insects with cutting mandibles; and
such a devastation in the plantations of Carolina
and Georgia might at any time have destroyed,
perhaps irreparably, the prosperity of the cotton
manufacture. It is a proof that much of the
improvidence of the savage still lurks in the
blood of that fine specimen of the calculating,
prudent, and civilised man, the cotton-spinner,
that he never combined with his fellows to
employ a series of scientific men to study the
botany and zoology of the cotton-plant. When
you know all about the structure of a plant, its
life, its distribution, its culture, its uses, you do
not as yet know it completely, because, for
practical purposes, you must also know its animal
enemies.

This is not the place to settle the question
whether the word cotton comes from the Arabic
word cootn, or from the process of weaving, or
cottoning, or laying on side or coast (Gallicè,
côte) wise, which the material undergoes, woven
woollen stuffs having, it is said, been in former
times called cotton. The words muslin,
nankeen, and calico are derived from Asian cities,
which obtained great renown in the middle ages,
from the excellence of their cotton fabrics.
The cotton-plant, or shrub (Gossypium), which
is only acclimated in America, is indigenous in
India. It has something of the size and
appearance of a currant-bush. On the centre of
each petal of the white flower there is a pretty
crimson spot; when the flower withers away
the pods appear; and when the ripening pods,
which were about the size of an apple, bursts
open, the downy threads or fibres of the seed-
vessels hang down like long feathery flakes.
The yellow blossoms, the crimson spotted petals,
and the snowy tufts of the gossypium make the
cotton-field a beautiful landscape. The tailor-
bird of Hindostan sews together a few large
leaves with cotten threads, making in this way
a nest which swings from the shady boughs of
the shrub. According as these snowy tufts or
feathery flakes are short or long, the cotton is
called short or long staple cotton. Long