The Bulletin. 



Volume 27. North Carolina State Board of Agriculture. Number 9. 



Entered at the Raleigh Post-office as second-class mail matter. 



The Bulletin is published monthly by the State Board of Agriculture. 



RALEIGH, SEPTEMBER, 1906. 



COTTOK PLANT. 



BY C. B. WILLIAMS. 



This plant has been known of and highly' valued from time im- 

 memorial. In India, China, and in Egypt and other parts of Africa it 

 was grown and its fiber constructed into fabrics prior to the advent of 

 the Christian era. It was found gi'owing in the West Indies by 

 Columbus and in Mexico by Cortez. From the ancient tombs of 

 the Incas of Peru articles of cotton cloth have been removed. With 

 all this antiquity of the cotton plant, its introduction into the United 

 States Avas not until the beginning of the third decade of the 

 eighteenth century, when it was first gTown in Virginia. Here and 

 in the Carolinas its growth was confined principally until the latter 

 part of the century, when, through the inventions of improved spin- 

 ning-machinery by Hargraves, Cartwright and Crompton, and later, 

 the invention of the power-loom by Cartwright and the cotton-gin 

 by Whitney, its growth was greatly stimulated and extended, until 

 to-day ten of the Southern States of the Union produce about four- 

 fifths of the world's supply of raw cotton, which sells annually for 

 something like $500,000,000 to $700,000,000. On two-thirds to 

 three-quarters of the farms in six of these States cotton is the princi- 

 pal source of income, and in the United States, although only cov- 

 ering one-twelfth of the acreage under cultivation and producing less 

 than two-fifths of a bale per acre, it comprises about one-eighth of 

 the total value of all crops growm. 



In ISTorth Carolina almost one-fifth of all cultivated land is given 

 over to the growth of cotton, the products from which sell for about 

 one-third of the total price brought by all crops. 



ISTow, in consideration of these very significant facts, space will 

 he given to a study, in a brief way, of the plant that produces this 

 crop for which our State and the entire Southland is pre-eminently 

 noted and distinctively adapted, and on which it is so largely depend- 

 ent as a source of revenue ; devoting especial attention to the effects 

 of environment, requirements of growth, and to the composition, 

 structure, relation, etc., of its different parts and their utility and 

 economic importance, with the hope of throwing some little light 



