108 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



then, performs no small part in laying the foundation of all 

 commercial as well as national prosperity. The cotton crop, as 

 the result of soil-tilling, will, no doubt, furnish some items of 

 interest. Let us for a moment spin a story. 



All the farms in the world raise about 1,500,000,000 pounds 

 of cotton. From the reports of the London Exhibition, we 

 learn that one man had on exhibition 2,400 hanks of cotton, 

 each contahiing 810 yards of thread, and yet the whole weigh- 

 ing only one pound. This one pound of thread will be in length 

 about 2,000 miles, and the 1,500,000,000 pounds would thus 

 make 3,000,000,000,000 miles. Witli the yarn already spun, 

 let us weave a web of interest. Putting in our loom of fancy 

 100 threads to the inch, using one-half for the warp, and the 

 rest for the woof, let us see how long a piece of cloth we can 

 make, one yard in width; by mathematical rules, — we calculate 

 420,000,000 yards, — more than four times enough to reach to 

 the sun — more than enough to wind around the earth 16,000 

 times — or about enough to make a sheet ten miles wide, and 

 long enough to reach once around the world. If, in the form of 

 thread, it could be used as a telegraphic line, and all the planets 

 were in a row, there could be a station in the Sun, Mercury, 

 Venus and Earth, and Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, 

 and the forty-four other asteroids. Talk about inconceivable 

 distances ! Why, the thread that might be made from cotton 

 vegetation alone would far more than reach the farthest planet 

 in space. And were all this to grow in one stalk, no larger 

 than the thread, it would shoot upward faster than flies the ball 

 belched from the flaming mouth of the cannon. Add to this 

 the linen, tow, and hemp of various kinds, raised in the world, 

 and we have annually enough to make ample sacks for the 

 asteroids. 



During the present year there have been raised in the United 

 States, to say nothing of other countries — 



600,000,000 bushels of corn. 



