A PLANT OF MYSTERY.
The wealth that some small discovery in botany may confer on a community has always stirred the historical imagination ' from the date of the cultivation of barley and rice, and later • of wheat and oats ; and one of the most exciting of such
diacoveries is now under trial in England, to wit the alleged '-new cotton plant, tracked down (by help of nesting humming-
birds'!) after eight years' search in Guiana and now being ' grown in Essex, Suffolk, and Sussex. The nature of the plant, as well as its name, still remains a profound secret, even to Government authorities. The world is naturally suspicious of mysteries ; but there is good reason to hope, if not to believe, that a new source of cotton capable of being grown in England has really been found ; and if the crop fulfils the eager prophecies of its discoverers, two—perhaps three—of, our cardinal industries would greatly benefit : farming, cotton, and artificial silk.
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