=Cotton-growing in Peru.=--It would be a difficult matter to fix a time when cotton was first grown in Peru. Pizarro, who conquered this country early in the sixteenth century, found that the natives were fully engaged in the growing and spinning of cotton. Dr. Dabney, Assistant Secretary of the U.S.A. Agricultural Department, states that he has seen a cloth made of cotton recently taken from one of the Peruvian mummies which must be many, many centuries old. There is not the slightest doubt that the Cotton plant is indigenous to Peru. Thirty-five years ago Liverpool received no less than 300,000 pounds weight of cotton from Peru, and three years later over 4,000,000 pounds. During the last decade of the century it exceeded 6,000,000 pounds to England alone. Two kinds of Peruvian cotton are grown--smooth and rough. This latter is a rough, strong fibre, and is exceptionally well adapted for mixing with wool in the manufacture of hosiery, and a greater part of this cotton coming in England is used in the hosiery trade. The plant from which it is produced is a perennial, and for six or seven years is said to give two crops a year. Owing to the peculiarly favourable climate of Peru and the suitability of the soil, it is exceedingly improbable that any strong competitor will come to divert the Peruvian trade, so that for some time yet we may look to this country supplying the hosiery trade with rough Peruvian cotton. The importations of Peruvian cotton into the United States for 1894-95 were 24,000 bales; for 1895-96, 24,603 bales; for 1896-97, 16,604 bales. =The Cultivation of Cotton in India.=--There are other Asiatic cotton fields besides those of India, viz., China, Corea, Japan, the Levant, and Russia in Asia. The term "India" will be used in a somewhat restricted sense in this section, and will cover only that huge triangular-shaped peninsula lying to the south of Thibet in Asia. It is 1800 miles in width and nearly 2000 miles in length. The total area, not including Assam and Burmah, is about 1,300,000 square miles, the native states alone covering 595,000 square miles. Out of the 28 deg. of North Latitude through which India stretches, no less than 15-1/2 deg. are in the tropics, the remainder being in the Temperate Zone. The climate, owing to a number of circumstances, such as different altitudes and uneven distribution of moisture, is exceedingly varied.