And yet Columbus found the Cubans, as Pizarro found the Peruvians, and Cortes found the Mexicans, clothed in cotton. Was it from the same plant as now supplies 'half the calico used by the entire human race' (as an American writer has computed)? This estimate, by the way, was arrived at thus: In 1889-90 the cotton crop of the world was 6094 millions of pounds, and the population of the world was computed at 1500 millions. This gave four pounds of raw cotton, equal to twenty yards of calico, per head; and the proportion of raw cotton provided by the Southern States was equal to eleven and a half yards per head. The raw cotton imported by Great Britain in 1894 had a value of nearly 33 million pounds sterling; the exports of cotton yarn and manufactured goods amounted to about 66 millions sterling. There are several species of the cotton plant; but those of commercial importance are four in number. Herbaceous Cotton ('Gossypium herbaceum') is the plant which yields the East Indian 'Surat' and some varieties of the Egyptian cotton. Its habitats are India, China, Arabia, Egypt, and Asia Minor. It is an annual: it grows to a height of five or six feet, it has a yellow flower, and it yields a short staple. Tree Cotton ('Gossypium arboreum'), on the other hand, grows to a height of fifteen or twenty feet, has a red flower, and yields a fine silky wool. Its habitats are Egypt, Arabia, India, and China. Hairy Cotton ('Gossypium hirsutum') is a shrub of some six or seven feet high, with a white or straw-coloured flower, and hairy pods, which yield the staple known as American 'Upland' and 'Orleans' cotton. Another variety, called 'Gossypium Barbadense,' because it was first found in Barbadoes, grows to a height of about fifteen feet, and has a yellow flower, yielding a long staple, and fine silky wool known as 'Sea Island' cotton. This now grows most extensively on the coasts of Georgia and Florida; but has been experimented with in various parts of the world, notably in Egypt, where it has succeeded; and in the Polynesian islands, where, for some reason or another, it has failed. The cotton plant of the American cotton plantations is an annual, which shoots above ground in about a fortnight after sowing, and which, as it grows, throws out flower-stalks, at the end of each of which develops a pod with fringed calyces. From this pod emerges a flower which, in some of the American varieties of the general species, will change its colour from day to day. The complete bloom flourishes for only twenty-four hours, at the end of which time the flower twists itself off, leaving a pod or boll, which grows to the size of a large filbert, browns and hardens like a nut, and then bursts, revealing the fibre or wool encased in three or four (according to the variety) cells within. This fibre or wool is the covering of the seeds, and in each cell will be as many separate fleeces as seeds, yet apparently forming one fleece.