COTTON, a vegetable hair or filament constituting the wing of the seed of the different species of Gossypium, a plant belonging to the order of Malvacem, growing both in the temperate and tropi cal climates, indigenous in Asia, Africa, and South America. Both fiber and seed are produced in pods not unlike the outer shell of the walnut. When the seed ap and is one of the purest forms of cel lulose. 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. It has now become a secondary product of very great value. Tree cotton (G. arboreurn) is found in India, China, Egypt, on the W. coast of Africa, and in some parts of America, especially in the West Indies. It only attains the height of from 12 to 20 feet; but another cotton-bearing tree (born box ceiba), seen in the West Indies and elsewhere, familiarly called the umbrella tree, attains the height of 100 feet. The produce of the latter, however, is of a short and brittle fiber. Being unfit for spinning, it is only useful for stuffing pillows and beds. Shrub cotton (G. religiosum) occurs in one or other of its proaches maturity the fiber in which it Is enveloped, which had previously been in a cylindrical form filled with watery sap, becomes dry. The sap is then de posited upon the walls of the outer cell, which then collapses longitudinally and takes on a spiral form slightly blunt at the point where it is attached to the seed, and pointed at the end. 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, varieties throughout the tropical parts of Asia, Africa, and America. In ap pearance it resembles a currant-bush. Its duration varies acording to the climate ; in the hottest countries it is perennial, while in cooler places it becomes an an nual. The Guiana, Brazil, and most of
the West India cotton, is of this kind, the whole being long-stapled.
Herbaceous cotton (G. herbaceum), commonly called the green-seed variety, is far the most useful and important of the three kinds noticed. It is an annual plant cultivated in the United States, India, China, and many other countries. It attains the height of 18 or 24 inches. The seed is usually planted in rows in March, April, and May; the cotton is gathered by hand within a few days of the opening of the pods, in August, Sep tember, and October; in the United States often through November and De cember, or even till it becomes necessary to prepare the land for a new crop. It is to this kind that planters mainly con fine their attention in the United States. In places where cotton is more exten sively cultivated the following varieties are commonly distinguished: (1) Nan keen cotton, abundant in produce, the seed covered with down, the wool of a dirty yellow color, and usually low priced. (2) Green-seeded cotton, which, as well as the former, is grown in up land and middle districts, whence the destructive to the crops, which are besides precarious from the disease to which the plant is subject, par ticularly blight. In general it flourishes most luxuriantly and yields prod uce of the best quality on the coast, as is proved by the growth of the sea island cotton, which is mostly exposed to the action of the ocean's spray; and a manure of soft mud is known to impart a healthful action to the plant and to produce a staple at once strong and silky. To this rule, however, the fine Pernambuco cotton is an exception; also the Egyptian, the growth of the upper provinces being greatly superior to that of the Nile Delta. In the United States by special cultivation two, three, and even four bales of 500 pounds each can be made on a single acre.