Cottonseed

“ In the green-seed variety, the one chiefly cultivated, it is of a white or yellowish hue, soft, flexible, and a non-conductor of heat. The fiber consists chiefly of carbonaceous material drawn from the atmosphere, and is one of the purest forms of cellulose. Although cotton-seed, which is produced at the ratio in weight of two and a half to three parts of seed to each one of fiber, has long been the source of valuable oils and food for cattle in Egypt and India, the cotton-seed of the United States was in former days mostly wasted. ”

“ As the tree only attains to a height of from twelve to twenty feet, it is difficult to distinguish the tree cotton and the shrub cotton when referred to by travellers.
The cotton plant, in all its varieties, requires a sandy soil. It flourishes on the rocky hills of Hindostan, Africa, and the West Indies, and will grow where the soil is too poor to produce any other valuable crop.
Cotton has always been regarded as indigenous to India, and as the characteristic clothing material of that country, as flax is of Egypt, silk of China, and the wool of sheep and goats of Northern Asia. ”

“ The factor of seed selection in cotton growing is of the greatest importance and yet I think it is safe to say that over 75 percent, of the growers of upland cotton, and indeed many Sea Island cotton growers, pay no attention to it, simply taking their seed from the pile at a public gin, for instance, without any reference to the variety, vigor, productiveness, etc. It is entirely a matter of chance as to whether they get poor and worthless seed or seed of fair quality. Superior seed of any strain could never be obtained in this way other than as a rare accident. ”

“ Cotton thus planted in thin soil, will mature and open as soon as that which has been planted three weeks sooner in bottom lands.
When the earth is moist and warm, cotton-seed will sprout, and be up in about five or six days; but if the soil be dry it takes much longer—or until there is rain sufficient to saturate the loose earth: for the seed, being covered with a thick coat of coarse wool, is not so readily, as some other seeds, acted upon by slight moisture. ”

“ A person carrying a bag of cotton seed follows the planter and scatters the seed into the channel. A small harrow follows, covering the seed, and the work of planting is complete.
A planting-gang consists of drivers for the planters, drivers for the harrows, persons who scatter the seed, and attendants to supply them with seed. The seed is drawn from the gin-house to the field in ox-wagons, and distributed in convenient piles of ten or twenty bushels each.
Cotton-seed has never been considered of any appreciable value, and consequently the negroes are very wasteful in using it. ”

“ It is clear that when a seed is ready to be set free, and is provided by a tuft of hair, such as is seen on the cotton seed, dandelion and willow herb, it becomes a very easy matter for it to be carried ever so far, when a good breeze is blowing. Most of us have blown, when children, at the crown of white feathery matter in the dandelion, and have been delighted to see the tiny parachutes carrying off its tiny seed to be afterward deposited, and ultimately take root and appear as a new plant. Much in the same way, before it was cultivated, the Cotton plant perpetuated its own species. ”

“ Exotic Cottons.—American and Egyptian seed have been introduced in many localities, especially in the Provinces of the Niger valley. Cotton grown from American Upland seed in Bassa Province has been well reported upon, but the deterioration of the quality of seed reproduced by this kind has proved a serious drawback to establishment. It is generally acknowledged that the indigenous cottons are hardier and more prolific than the introduced varieties, and are better able to withstand the attacks of the local insect pests. ”

“ After the crop is gathered, the ground is suffered to be overrun with weeds and brushwood; which, when years have elapsed, are cut down and burnt, and the field is re-planted. Cotton here is not in classification; it is gathered and sold in the seed, and ranges from ten to fifteen cents per pound. It is generally superior, both in texture and color; but the indolence of the natives, and other causes, will prevent the extensive cultivation of that article for many years to come. ”

“ This plant may be cultivated in lands newly cleared, and not yet proper for tobacco, much less for indigo, which requires a ground well worked like a garden. The seeds of cotton are planted three feet asunder, more or less according to the quality of the soil: the field is weeded at the proper season, in order to clear it of the noxious weeds, and fresh earth laid to the root of the plant, to secure it against the winds. The cotton requires weeding, neither so often, nor so carefully as other plants; and the care of gathering is the employment of young people, incapable of harder labour. ”

“ In all of them the fiber is really an appendage of the seeds, and each pod as it splits open is found to be packed full of a white cottony mass of these fibers with the seeds attached. These white masses of cotton, or bolls, have to be picked by hand, as no really successful machine has ever been found for this purpose. Women and children do a large part of the picking, and the wastage due to careless picking is tremendous. The whole value of the cotton crop depends upon an invention by Eli Whitney, an American, of a machine to separate the cotton from its seed. ”

“ The cotton plant is in reality a perennial, becoming quite shrubby with age, but in cultivation it is treated as an annual, being grown from seeds planted each spring. Three or four seeds are planted to each hill, the hills being about three feet apart. After sprouting the weaker individuals are removed, and at the end of three or four months the remaining carefully cultivated plants are pruned to make them more spreading and give a better yield of cotton. The plants grow quite rapidly, the cotton maturing about five months after planting. ”

“ The seeds are dropped along, from the small end of a gourd, into drills made with one corner of the hoe. The plants, when partly grown, are not transferred to another place, as in Asia, but are suffered to grow and ripen in the original drills. The crop is secured like wheat, and the husks are forced from the grain by a machine, which leaves the kernels more perfect than the methods adopted in other countries. [21]
28. Cotton is cultivated in the East and West Indies, North and South America, Egypt, and in many other parts of the world, where the climate is sufficiently warm for the purpose. ”

“ Millions of bushels of cotton seed are annually used as manure for corn, wheat, &c. in South Carolina. For this purpose the article is worth, at the present reduced prices of staple commodities, about 12 or 15 cents a bushel; weighing about 25 lbs. lightly thrown in. One hundred pounds of cotton seed, yields about 27 pounds of clean cotton, and about three bushels of seed. The oleaginous quality of the pulp of cotton-seed has long been known; and it is believed that any given quantity of it contains as much oil as a like quantity of the pulp of any other seed. ”

“ There is much conflict of opinion in localising the primitive habitat of this type, and it is now thought that the present stock is probably the result of hybridisation of several species more or less related to each other. However, the areas in which this class of cotton grows are very numerous and extensive, for we find it growing in India, China, Arabia, Persia, Asia Minor, and Africa. A very characteristic feature of this plant is that it quickly decays after podding, when cultivated as an annual. ”

“ The process of taking the longer fibre from the seed must be very carefully watched, as it becomes a troublesome matter to remove the shorter fibre when once it has come away from the seed with the longer. Hence great care should be taken in gathering this class of cotton. Another point which should not be lost sight of is, that the herbaceous type of Cotton plant readily hybridises with some other varieties and the result is a strain of much better quality. ”

“ The appearance of a well-cultivated cotton-field, if it has escaped the ravages of insects and the destruction of the elements, is of singular beauty. Although it may be a mile in extent, still it is as carefully wrought as is the mold of the limited garden of the coldest climate. The cotton-leaf is of a delicate green, large and luxuriant; the stalk indicates rapid growth, yet it has a healthy and firm look. Viewed from a distance, the perfecting plant has a warm and glowing expression. ”

“ One of the things remarked by Duke Bernhard of Saxe Weimar, when he visited the South in 1824, was that the people seemed unaware that there was any value in cotton seed. Some planters put it on the field as a fertilizer, where it has some value; others threw it away. During the last twenty years, however, the cotton seed has become a great factor in the production. About one third the weight of the seed cotton is seed, and its value is over one tenth that of the baled cotton. In the high cotton year of 1906 the cotton seed was thought to be worth nearly ninety millions. ”

“ In general the lint of the hybrids is about intermediate in length between the Sea Island and upland, and is of much better quality than the upland. Some of the hybrids are fairly productive, while others are nearly sterile. By a careful selection of seed from those which are of good quality and most productive, it would seem that we will certainly be able to produce an upland cotton that will give a longer staple than ordinary upland and yield abundantly in any upland cotton region. ”

“ Cotton requires six or seven months of favorable growing weather between spring and fall frost to mature, but picking may extend far into the winter. It thrives in a very warm or even hot temperature, provided the atmosphere is moist, but it will mature a crop on less water than any other crop plant. Any sudden change in temperature, moisture or cultural methods is apt to cause an abortion of the young fruit and flowers.
Usually cotton is planted on ridges or “beds.” Fertilizers, when used, are generally drilled into the beds just before planting. ”

“ The cotton, when perfectly ripe, is gathered by women and children, the seeds and wool being picked out of the pod; it is dried in the sun, and is then ready for the removal of the seeds. In India this operation is performed by means of two parallel rollers, which are fixed in a frame at a small distance apart, so that when they are turned round the cotton is drawn through whilst the seeds, which from their size are unable to pass, are torn off and separated. With this simple machine a man can separate the seeds from about fifty pounds of cotton in a day. ”

“ Daily in the early mornings he is to be seen casting his eyes down the pod-laden rows of cotton plants, to see if he can count a few ripe open bolls as he stands at the head of a row. If this be so, he knows that his harvest is close at hand, and his pickers must be ready at any moment to begin what is certainly the most tedious and difficult work of the plantation, namely, picking the raw cotton from the bursting bolls. ”

“ A plantation that sends a thousand bales of cotton to market will thus have forty thousand bushels of seed, for which there was formerly no sale.
With the most lavish use of the article, there was generally a surplus at the end of the year. Cattle and sheep will eat cotton-seed, though not in large quantities. Boiled cotton-seed is fed to hogs on all plantations, but it is far behind corn in nutritious and fattening qualities. Cotton-seed is packed around the roots of small trees, where it is necessary to give them warmth or furnish a rich soil for their growth. ”

“ The Cotton plant most readily responds to any changes of climate, methods of cultivation, change of soil or of fertilizers. So that it is easy to understand in a plant so susceptible and prone to vary as is the cotton, that new species may in a few years be brought into existence, and especially by means of proper selection of the seed, and careful cultivation. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Every other American type of cotton gives a greater percentage of lint than the Sea Islands cotton, though it should be stated that the price per pound is greater than any other kind of cotton grown in the States. There are from six to nine seeds in each capsule and the prevailing colour is black. A cotton grown in Egypt and known by the name Gallini is of the Sea Islands type and has been produced from seed of the G. Barbadense. It should be added that the colour of the flower is yellow and that in India this plant is known by the name of Bourbon Cotton. ”

“ The fertilizer is put in drill not over three or four inches deep, and is to be followed by a harrow. Now, get the best cotton seed. I use what I consider the best. I won’t tell you of its many good qualities for fear you will think this an advertisement. After the cotton has come up to a good stand, start the plows to barring it off. As soon as you have finished barring put on little sweeps and run close to the plants. This leaves them on a very narrow ridge and a good hand will chop from one to one-half acres more per day than he would on a bar. ”