RIO LECTURE 217 



supply first-class seed to the farmers for planting purposes, but by far 

 the greater part of the gins in the country, especially in Minas, are saw 

 gins of a very inferior type. It is an exception if the saws are ever 

 sharpened or overhauled. We found one saw gin which had been 

 working for 16 years without having the blades sharpened. Any 

 number of gins had been woi'king four or five years without any atten- 

 tion to the saws. Naturally, saws in this condition must cut the fibre. 

 This work of sharpening the saws is so important that the Cotton 

 Department should hand to one of their own travelling officials an 

 apparatus for this purpose. When the saws are sharpened it is generally 

 the case that the whole blade is iiled whilst only two-thirds should 1)6 

 attended to and the bottom corner should be left blunt. Another 

 great drawback resulting from the gins is that the machines are 

 worked too fast : whenever knots are visible in the ginned cotton you 

 may be certain that the machine was running too quickly. A leather 

 cover of two or three layers over the pulley on the gin Avill soon remedy 

 this evil. 



We have seen that in some of the modern ginning factories 

 mechanical openers such as the Creighton Opener are being used : this 

 is a machine that really belongs to the spinning mill. Cotton 

 treated by this machine, if run fast, is liable to lose the " bloom " 

 of raw cotton, which is so much appreciated by the spinner. An 

 apparatus which does not injure the fibre and does similar work to the 

 opener is a simple contrivance consisting of a hexagonal sieve with 

 small meshes, about 8 by 10 mm. wire-netting gauge. This sieve is in 

 a slanting position and rotates slowly ; the cotton enters at its upper 

 portion and is thrown Avith little force from one side to the other and 

 gradually it passes out at the lower end of the sieve in order to be 

 taken to the ginning machine. This apparatus extracts a great deal 

 of dust and dirt and does not rob the fibre of the bloom as do almost all 

 the openers. It must also be taken into consideration that such con- 

 trivance is easily made at any workshop and costs very little money. 

 In Alagoas and Scrgij^e there is hardly a ginning factory without such 

 a sieve. 



The major portion of the ginning machines in use in Brazil reduce 

 enormously the value of the fibre. The Federal Government recog- 

 nises the necessity which exists for the employment of roller gins and 

 allows their importation free of duty. They are constructed on the 

 same principle as the old-fashioned hand-gins used by the natives in 

 the Interior. 



Mixture of Seeds. — A still greater evil results from the sale of 

 mixed seed by the owners of ginning factories. It is a general custom in 

 Brazil when a farmer requires seed for sowing purposes to buy the 

 necessary quantity at any gin in his neighbourhood, regardless of the 

 number of varieties of seed available. The small farmer plants any 

 seed he is given (and it generally consists of at least five varieties) ; 

 the result is, of course, that in due time his field presents a diversified 

 aspect of all these varieties. The evil produced in this manner through 

 the sale of seed by the ginning factories means that all the good done 

 by the Cotton Department is being undone. It is indeed regrettable 

 that on the one hand the Government expends a great amount of 

 labour for the improvement of cotton cultivation and on the other 



