3IO THE BOOK OF USEFUL PLANTS 



hand, or with tools we make, the retting, breaking, 

 scutching, and heckling. 



Choose the longest fibre in the skein of your own 

 making. Stretch it taut. The English word, 

 "line," originally meant "a thread of flax," 

 whose Latin name is Linum. A dozen words 

 come from this old root: the German lein, French 

 lin, Celtic llin, Swiss linie. The English words 

 lint, liniment, linseed are from the same root. I 

 fancy that lin, a pool or brook, came from the use 

 made of these in the retting of flax. 



COTTON 



Dixie-land is the land of cotton. Draw a line 

 on the map from the mouth of the James River, at 

 Norfolk, Virginia, west to Cairo, Illinois, and on 

 through Memphis, and Little Rock to Dallas, 

 Texas. Below it lies the region of profitable cot- 

 ton culture of the United States. "The Cotton 

 Belt" occupies the southeastern quarter of our 

 country, touching the Atlantic and the Gulf, and 

 reaching nearly to the western boundary of Texas. 

 Only the lower half of Florida and the delta of the 

 Mississippi are left out, and they are offset by a 

 cotton region in the new West that centres at 

 the point where Utah, Nevada, and Arizona meet. 



