662 HORTICULTURE, FORESTRY, FLORICULTURE 



square pile in a cool room. It should be packed down solidly and, 

 if the air is dry, covered with blankets or boards and left from three 

 to six weeks before ginning. When it comes out of bulk the staple 

 has lost its harsh feeling and is soft, oily, and glossy. 



Care must be taken never to bulk cotton that has not previously 

 been well dried, or the pile will heat. On the other hand, a loose, 

 conical pile, formed by throwing seed cotton into a storeroom, is not 

 a bulk, for it does not prevent the cotton from drying out still more. 

 As a rule, cotton brought to the gins early in the season is too green 

 and damp and needs sunning to put it into good condition, while 

 that coming in late or taken from the storehouses during the winter 

 is overdry and consequently harsh and brittle. Both the lint cotton 

 and the thread spun from it lack their full strength if too dry. 

 Everyone knows how a dry twig will snap in the fingers, while a 

 green one only bends. The same to a less degree is true of the cotton 

 fiber. The quality is best maintained, however, by avoiding over- 

 drying rather than by the addition of moisture. 



Injury in Ginning. The grade of cotton is often reduced during 

 the process of ginning. This may be the fault of the farmer, as 

 when he brings his cotton to the gin damp or full of hard or yellow 

 locks or broken leaf and insists on close ginning ; or the fault may lie 

 with the ginner, who has failed to adjust his machine so that no seed 

 can be broken. Briefly stated, seed cotton must be dry ; if green or 

 wet, "crimping" invariably results, to the serious injury of the fiber. 

 The seed cotton should be free from hard locks or else the stripper 

 bar should be adjusted to let them fall through with the seed. Close 

 ginning is a form of adulteration instantly detected by the buyer and 

 very costly to the farmer. The modern fruit grower has learned that 

 he can not profitably mix his culls with his firstgrade fruit, and the 

 cotton grower must come to a similar conclusion. 



The most frequent defects due to ginning are the presence of 

 portions of broken seed and the cutting or crimping of the fiber. 

 Since poor ginning costs the farmer, at a conservative estimate, 1 

 cent a pound, the ginner should be required to maintain his gin in 

 perfect adjustment and to gin the cotton free from cracked, clipped, 

 mashed, or whole seed and free from crimp. 



The ginned cotton should come from the roller steadily and in 

 an unbroken flake. Whenever it does not do this, an examination 

 will show that the adjustment is not perfect, and the cotton is liable 

 to sustain injury unless the trouble is corrected. (F. B. 302.) 



COTTON SEED AND ITS PRODUCTS. 



The lint was formerly considered the only valuable product of 

 cotton, but modern enterprise has found a use for almost every part 

 of the plant. In fact, of all the staple crops of the United States 

 not one can be produced with a slighter dram upon the elements of 

 fertility of the soil than cotton, and none excels it in variety and 

 value of its products. 



The lint is comparatively poor in fertilizing constituents, con- 

 taining only 0.34 per cent of nitrogen, 0.10 per cent of phosphoric 

 acid, and 0.46 per cent of potash. It is evident, therefore, that if 



