which place, however, patients suffering from the disease in Port Royal were carried for treatment.

The following table is from the reports of the Board of Health, and shows the number of deaths occurring in each one thousand of the population of the city of Charleston :

The figures for 1880 show fifty per cent. more deaths than were reported by the enumerators of the tenth U. S. Census. Of 1,621 deaths in 1881, 61, or nearly 4 per cent. were of persons over 80 years of age.

STATISTICS.

The population of the coast region, exclusive of the towns of Beaufort, Charleston and Georgetown, is 67,132. Of this number, 83 per cent. are colored, being the largest percentage in any region of the State, the proportion of the colored to the white population decreasing in each successive region as you go inland, until it is only 27 per cent. in the mountain region. This percentage has decreased on the coast since 1870, appearing in the census of that year as 90 per cent., a difference of 7 per cent. The population per square mile is 39.4, which, in spite of the large amount of marsh land, is the largest of any region in the State, the ratio varying elsewhere from 11.7 in the sand hills, to 37.8 in the upper country or region of the metamorphic rocks.

The farms are 5,847 in number, and average 3.4 per square mile, which is the largest average of any of the regions of the State except that of the upper country, which is 3.7 per square mile; but excluding the six hundred square miles of marsh on the coast, no similar tract of waste land being found in the upper country, the ratio of farms to area is much greater on the coast than elsewhere. This is not the case with the ratio of farms to population, which here reaches a minimum of eight-hundredths of a farm per capita, or twelve and one-half people to the farm, while in the sand hills it reaches fourteen-hundredths of a farm per capita, or seven people to the farm. This shows that here the population is in excess even of the small farms; and there being no other occupation, except,

perhaps, phosphate mining, in which they may be employed, it follows that a large number must earn a living as farm laborers or live without employment, both of which conclusions are correct.

The work stock numbers 7,692 animals, being eleven-hundredths of an animal per capita, which is more than the ratio in the lower pine belt, but less than that of the other regions. The work stock per square mile is 4.5, being greater than in any other region, except in the upper pine belt and Piedmont regions.

The product of grain, including corn, small grain and rice, is 793,669 bushels, being 11 bushels per capita, the minimum found in any region of the State. Per square mile, the average is 466 bushels, which compares favorably with an average of 501 bushels for the whole State, especially when the salt marshes are allowed for. This is an increase on the crop of 1870, which was only stated at 389,720 bushels, or 229 bushels per square mile, and 18 bushels per capita, the latter figure being much diminished by the larger population returns of 1880.

The total of all stock, including work stock, is 43,946, averaging 25.8 per square mile against an average of 57.1 for the whole State, and 0.65 per capita, being a little less than half the average of the whole State, which is 1.27. This is an increase since 1870, the average then being 9.4 per square mile, and 0.70 per capita.

The acreage of improved land is 106,772, being 62 acres per square mile, not quite one-tenth of the total area, and 1.5 acres per capita, as against an average of 3.8 acres per capita for the whole State. The bulk of this land is planted in corn, cotton, small grain and rice, there being only 9,552 acres in other crops and fallow; a large part of the latter being, doubtless, the cotton lands left fallow by the best planters each alternate year.

PRODUCTIONS.

The olive and orange tree bring their fruit to full perfection on the South Carolina coast. Once only during a period of sixteen years previous to 1880 were the orange trees injured by frost, when the tops of about one-fourth were killed, while the roots put out fresh shoots; the fruit from single trees in the neighborhood of Beaufort has for a series of years sold for $150 to $250. The oranges of this region bring a higher price in the market and are thought superior to those grown further south. Even the banana, with a not expensive winter protection, has been made to ripen its fruit. Fig trees of every variety, with little or no attention, grow everywhere and produce several abundant crops yearly; so that could some process similar to the Alden process for drying fruit

be adapted to them, they might become an important staple of export. Every variety of garden produce does well, as witness the extensive truck gardens on Charleston Neck, which furnish large supplies of fruits and vegetables of the finest quality to distant markets. The wild grapes, which attracted the notice of the first French colonists in 1562, still abound, and perhaps the largest grape vine in the world is one eighteen inches in diameter, near Sheldon Church, Beaufort County. Hay made of Bermuda grasses, ranking in the market with the best imported hay, has been profitably grown. Five acres at the Atlantic farm have, for a series of years, yielded nine thousand pounds per acre yearly, and on the Stono farm two tons one year, and four and a half another, has been made to the acre. Winter vetches grow wild, and the vine of the cow pea furnishes an abundant forage, besides increasing the fertility of the soil. The red rust proof oat, recently introduced, is peculiarly adapted to the mild winters of this region, yielding readily, and with great certainty, thirty to fifty bushels per acre. Should an increase of the population call for a larger food supply, the sweet potato would furnish it to an extent practically unlimited. Indigo, rice, hemp, beans, peanuts, the castor oil bean, the sugar cane, and many other sub-tropical fruits and vegetables, too numerous to catalogue here, have been successfully cultivated as field crops. Indian corn, of the white flint variety, yields in the coast counties a little more per acre than the average yield of the same crop throughout the State. Nevertheless, only a very limited attention is bestowed on the culture of any of these articles, the leading crop, to the exclusion or dwarfing of all others, being

LONG STAPLE COTTON.

In every handful of ordinary cotton seed, three varieties, presenting well marked differences, may be recognized at a glance. The largest of these is covered with a green down; another, smaller and much more numerous seed, is covered with a white or grayish down; the third variety is naked, smooth and black. Whether these three sorts of seed correspond to three classes under which the numerous varieties of cotton are arranged, that is, the green seed with gossypium hirsutum or shrub cotton, attaining a height of ten or twelve feet, a native of Mexico, and varying as an annual, biennial or perennial, according to the climate in which it is grown; the white seed, with gossypium herbaceum, or herbaceous cotton, an annual, attaining a height of two feet, native of the Coromandel coast and the Nilgeherries; the black seed, with gossypium arboreum, or tree cotton, a native of the Indian Peninsular, but attaining a height of one hundred feet on the Guinea coast, and producing a silky

cotton, it may not be possible to say. The black seed, however, is not distinguished from the seed of the long staple or sea island cotton. If selected from among the other varieties of upland cotton seed, it will in a series of years produce a finer, silkier and stronger fibre than ordinary uplands. If the best and purest sea island cotton seed be planted in the neighborhood of the upland or short staple cotton they will readily hybridize. Among the numerous varieties of hybrids thus produced, there will prominently appear a vigorous plant, with a very large green seed. The staple of these green seed plants varies greatly, in some instances being very short and coarse, in others longer and finer even than the best sea island. The most marked characteristic, however, of these hybrids will be the size and vigor of the plants, the size of the seed and the very small amount of lint they yield. A noticeable feature, too, is the large number of vigorous, growing, but unfruitful, plants that these green seed hybrids produce, their large, glossy leaves showing above the other plants, but bearing the season through neither bud or blossom. Possibly such plants merely resume the biennial character of the tree or the shrub cotton and would be fruitful the second season.

Were it in place here to offer a theory, these characteristics of this green seed hybrid might be adduced as evidence of a reversion to the original type of the allied species which Darwin refers to, as a frequent occurrence among hybrids produced between remoter and more dissimilar varieties.

ORIGIN OF LONG STAPLE COTTON.

It would be a matter of much interest to determine the origin and history of the varieties of cotton now in cultivation. The difficulties of doing this are much increased by the very wide geographical range occupied by the plant. The earliest explorers, Columbus, Magellan, Drake, Capt. Cook, and others, seem to have found it almost everywhere in the broad belt extending from the equator to 30° S. and to 40° and 45° N. latitude, where it now grows. Although it is not found among those oldest of vestments, the wrappings of Egyptian mummies, its use was known to man in Europe, Asia, Africa, America, and the outlying islands of the sea, in the remote past, far beyond the historic age. Its very name itself bears evidence to this, occurring as it does in many, and in the most ancient languages. Thus through the Dutch ketoen, Italian cotone, Spanish algodon, we pass to the Greek kiton, turned wrong side out in the Latin tunic, to the Arabic katan, the Syriac kethene, the Samaritan kitana, the Sanscrit katan, the Hebrew kuttoneth (Gen. xxxvii: 23, 31), the Ethiopic kethan, the Chaldee kethan; and Gesenius conducts us to a most ancient and obsolete Semetic root, kathan, signifying to cover. Nevertheless nothing

can show more clearly the importance of tracing and understanding the history of plants under cultivation than the variations and improvements in black seed cotton since its introduction on the Carolina coast. It is known that the first bale of long staple cotton exported from America, in 1788, was grown on St. Simon's island, Georgia. That this bale was grown by a Mr. Bissell, from seed that came from either the Bahama or the Barbadoes islands. Singularly enough the authorities leave this matter in doubt-the Hon. Wm. Elliott saying it came from Anguilla, one of the Bahamas, and Signor Filippo Partatori (Florence, 1866) saying it came from Cat island, one of the Barbadoes. But as Anguilla is one of the Barbadoes, and Cat island one of the Bahamas, it would seem difficult to decide to which group of islands we are indebted for these seed. However, as Mr. Thomas Spalding, of Sapelo island, says in a letter to Governor Seabrook, in 1844, that three parcels of long staple cotton seed were brought to a gentleman in Georgia, from the Bahamas, in 1785 and 1786, it would seem that the seed reached our coast from those islands. In the Bahamas it was called gossypium barbadense, in consequence doubtless of being brought from Barbadoes. In the latter island it was known as Persian cotton (Edward's West Indies, vol. iv., p. 363) and was thought to have come from that country where it was originally derived from the gossypyum arboreum of India. Be this as it may, Mrs. Kinsey Burden, of Burden's island, Colleton county, S. C., obtained some of these seeds from Georgia and planted them. This crop failed to mature, and the first successful crop of long staple cotton grown in South Carolina was planted in 1790, by William Elliott, on the northwest corner of Hilton Head, on the exact spot where Jean Ribault landed the first colonists and erected a column of stone, claiming the territory for France a century before the English settled on the coast. Mr. Elliott's crop sold for 10 d. per pound. Other planters made use of this seed, but it was not until Kinsey Burden, Sr., of Colleton county, began his selections of seed, about the year 1805, that attention was strongly called to the long staple. Mr. Burden sold his crop of that year for twenty-five cents per pound more than did any of his neighbors. He continued to make selections of seed and to improve his staple, and in 1825 he sold a crop of sixty bales at $1.16 per pound. The year subsequent his crop sold for $1.25, and in 1828, he sold two bales of extra fine cotton at $2.00 per pound, a price not often exceeded since. The legislature was on the point of offering Mr. Burden $200,000 for his method of improving the staple of cotton, and Mr. Wm. Seabrook, of Edisto, was prepared to pay him $50,000 for his secret, when it was discovered that the fine cotton was due wholly to improvements made in the seed by careful and skillful selections. Since then the greatest care has been bestowed upon the selection of the seed, and to such perfection