There is therefore no reason to question the statement which has repeatedly been made, that at least three centres are known in which the Cotton plant from very early times has been indigenous, and that the peoples of these countries were well acquainted with the property and uses of the cotton wool obtained from the plant. An average of more than 1,000,000 bales, each weighing 500 lbs., are exported from Egypt every year, and the question has been raised whether the cultivation of the plant in Egypt can be said to date far back. This is not so. The fibre almost exclusively used by the ancient Egyptians was flax, and the nature of the garments covering the mummies of the ancient Egyptians has been satisfactorily decided by the microscope. It is very probable that the cultivation of the plant at the beginning of the thirteenth century was carried on purely for the purpose of ornamental gardening, and even when the seventeenth century was fairly well advanced, the Egyptians still imported cotton. The nineteenth century, however, has seen important developments in the cultivation of cotton in Egypt, and now the position attained by this country is only outdistanced by the United States and India. =The Botany of Cotton.=--Botanists tell us that the vegetable kingdom is primarily divided into three great classes--viz., (1) Dicotyledons; (2) Monocotyledons; and (3) Acotyledons. Now these names solely refer to the nature and form of the seeds produced by the plants, and by the first it is understood that a single seed is divisible into two seed lobes in developing. In the case of the second, the seed is formed only of one lobe, and in the third the seed is wanting as a cotyledon, but the method of propagation is carried on by what are called spores. We have examples of the last-named class in the ferns, lycopods and horsetail plants. The first two of the above-named classes have been well called Seed plants. These are again broken up into divisions, to which the name Natural Orders has been given. Most of us know, as the following are examined, Anemone, Buttercup, Marsh Marigold, Globe Flower, and Larkspur, that they have the same general structural arrangement, but in many particulars they differ. Thus these natural orders are again subdivided into genera, and a still further subdivision into species is made.