MISCELLANEOUS CROPS. 205 



The cotton is assorted into four grades : 1st. The fine, long- 

 stapled cotton, clean, dry, and silky. Early pickings will yield 

 a large per cent of this quality before the time of frost and 

 heavy fall rains. 2d. Short, kinky bolls that have been bored 

 by the boll worm, or late and killed by the frost, or that which 

 has been grown with excessive or irregular moisture. 3d. Trashy 

 cotton, mixed with broken leaves and stems, after heavy frosts. 

 This is what causes the black specks in the coarser grades of 

 muslin. 4th. Dirty cotton which has been beaten down by rain 

 and wind, and mixed with sand and earth. 



The best grade should never be allowed to become damp from 

 dew, and should lie a month or more before ginning, as the oil in 

 the seed ascends into the fiber, increasing the weight and giving 

 a fine pale straw color. 



The less cotton is handled the better, and a wagon should 

 be arranged so as to receive the baskets instead of emptying 

 them into the wagon bed. 



It takes over four pounds of seed cotton to make one of 

 ginned. Ten good hands can pick enough to make one bale a 

 day, and the average weight of a bale is about five hundred 

 pounds. 



GINNING. The plantation gins are usually run by horse- 

 power, but sometimes by steam. The principle of the cotton gin 

 is simple. A wooden cylinder four feet long, and five inches in 

 diameter, is provided with circular saws nine inches in diameter. 

 These saws are set one-half inch apart, and project two inches 

 from the cylinder, which revolves from the operator. The 

 saws revolve between steel bars set so close as not to nllow the 

 seed to pass, but the teeth carry the cotton through. Below 

 the saws a set of stiff brushes revolve in the opposite direction, 

 and brush off and clear away the lint from the saw teeth. A 

 fan is also arranged to furnish a blast of air to carry the lint to 

 a convenient distance from the machine. These are the three 

 essential points of the cotton gin. 



Cotton must be dry to gin well, and a scaffold should be 

 provided for drying that which is damp. This scaffold should 

 adjoin the gin-house, and should have a canvas roof which can 



