A WONDERFUL NEW COTTON PLANT.

Thames Star, Volume XVI, Issue 5024, 18 February 1885, Page 3

A WONDERFUL NEW COTTON PLANT.

Attention' ia now attracted, says an American contemporary to a,new sort of cotton plant, which bids fair to prove immensely valuable. For many years A. A. Sabers, of Macon, has been carefully cxi erimenting to hybridise the cotton plant that grows wild in Florida with the common okra. The cotton plant is that tprcies found in the lowlands of the C-iloosahatchie Eiver. ; >The new plant retains the okra stalk and the foliago of the cotton. Its flower and fruit, however, are strikingly unlike either cotton or okra. The plant has an average height of 2 feet, and has one loom. This is a magnificent flower of ODe loom, very much like the great magnolia in fragrance and equally ns large. Like the cotton %loona, the flower is white for several days after it npens, after which it is first pale pink, and gradually assumes darker shades of 'his color until it becomes red, when it drops, disclosing a wonderful boll. For about ten days this boll resembles the cotton boll, and then its growth suddenly increases as if by magic, until it reaches the size of a big cocoanut. Not udtil it reaches does the lint appear. Then its snowy threads burst from the ball, but aro securely held in place by the okra like thori sor points that line the boll. One inexperienced picker can easily gather 8001bs a day, and fast hands much more. Were the only saving that of labor in gathering the lint, the result of Mr Suber's experiment would entitle him to the everlasting gratitude of the Southern farmer. But this is not all—there are no seeds in the lint. Each boll produces about 21bS' of very long staple of cotton, superior to the Sea Island,, and at the bottom of the boll there are from four to six seeds, resembling persimmon seed. This new cotton, therefore, needs no Boning. -