COTTON 73 



spring comes, the goldfinch does not have to think 

 of the materials for its nest ; it is sure that the osier- 

 beds, thistles, and roadside hedges will furnish in 

 abundance all that it needs. And it ought to be 

 thus, for a bird has not 

 the intelligence to prepare 

 a long time in advance, by 

 careful and wise industry, 

 the things that it will need. 

 Man, whose noble preroga- : 

 tive it is to acquire every- 

 thing by work and reflec- pickin * cotton by hand 

 tion, procures cotton from distant countries ; a bird 

 finds its cotton on the poplars of its grove. 



"At maturity the cotton bolls open wide, and their 

 flock bursts out in soft flakes that are gathered by 

 hand, boll by boll. The flock, well dried in the sun 

 on screens, is beaten with flails or, better, submitted 

 to the action of certain machines. It is thus freed 

 from all seeds and husks. Without any other prep- 

 aration, cotton comes to us in large bales to be con- 

 verted into fabrics in our manufactories. The 

 countries that furnish the most of it are India, 

 Egypt, Brazil, and, above all, the United States of 

 North America. 



"In a single year the European manufactories 

 work up nearly eight hundred million kilograms of 

 cotton. This enormous weight is not too much, 

 for the whole world clothes itself with the precious 

 flock, turned into print, percale, calico. Thus human 

 activity has no greater field than the cotton trade. 

 How many workmen, how many delicate operations, 



