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Cotton-Culture in Egypt.—While the Khedive is taxing to the utmost the resources of his dominions in his desire to subjugate his southern neighbors, he must regard as little less than providential the reputed discovery of a new and extraordinarily-productive species of cotton-plant, the general cultivation of which in the cotton-fields of Egypt will, it is said, more than double the present annual product. According to a correspondent of the London Times, in the autumn of 1873, a Copt living in the upper part of the Delta, at a place called Berket-el-Sab, a station of the Cairo Railway, in the province of Menuf, noticed a plant in a cotton-field wholly different from the rest. He collected the pods, separated the seed, and planted it in secret in an. isolated plot of ground. For three years he has carried on the cultivation, and now there are said to be from 800 to 1,000 pounds in the country, and the seed is sold in the public market. This seed is sold at a price twenty-five or thirty times higher than the common kind.

Comparing the product of this plant with that of the old, the Times correspondent remarks:

"An ardeb (270 pounds) of ordinary cotton-seed sows on an average eight feddans (acres), and produces four cantars (100 pounds) of cotton in seed—that is to say, the cotton with the seed inside it as it comes out of the cotton-pod. Taking this yield as the average, every ardeb planted produces 32 cantars of ginned cotton, and about 24 ardebs of seed. An ardeb of seed of the new species sows, like the other, eight feddans; but its yield is more than treble, and has even been stated at fivefold. But my most trustworthy informant only gives ten cantars per feddan, which I may add is the amount taken by one of the leading firms as the basis of their calculations as to the effect of the new plant. They add that it is difficult to say exactly what would be the ordinary yield, as all returns hitherto are the result of exceptional culture on a small scale. On this calculation of ten cantars, each ardeb of seed would produce 80 cantars of cotton in seed—that is to say, over double the amount produced by ordinary seed. At present prices each ardeb would return about £240 in seed and cotton together, instead of £96 as it does now. The new cotton, I am assured on the best authority, is of good appearance, commercially speaking, and quite equal in quality to the ordinary Egyptian cotton. The plant grows in a different manner from the ordinary cotton-plant. It grows to about the height of ten feet, has a straight, vertical stem, without branches, with very few leaves, and is thickly studded with pods. Seventy are said to have been gathered from the first plant discovered. The ordinary cotton is found on a shrub some four to five feet high, with spreading branches. Nearly a yard must be left for air, light, and growing-room between each shrub, whereas the new plant, from the absence of branches, requires only half the space."

Testimonials to Mr. Darwin.—On the occasion of his sixty-ninth birthday, Mr. Darwin was the recipient of two highly-gratifying testimonials of esteem from scientific men in Germany and in the Netherlands. From Germany came an album containing the photographs of 154 scientific men; it was inscribed, "Dam Reformator der Naturgeschichte" (To the Reformer of Natural History). The offering of the Dutch savants also consisted of an album, with photographs of 217 of his admirers in the Netherlands. Accompanying the latter