CHAPTER TWO 

 THE PLANT 



FROM SEED TO SEED 

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Seed and Plant. Here is a seed, grayish green and fuzzy. 



Have you seen one like it before ? If not, this seed brings to your 

 mind only a vague, general idea. You know that under favorable 

 conditions it will produce a plant, something green and living. 



If you are familiar with this seed, you know just what kind of 

 plant it will be, and how it will grow. It will be weak at first, 

 and rather clumsy-looking when its crumpled seed leaves push 

 through the soil. But it will grow strong and graceful, and throw 

 out spreading branches like a tiny maple tree. It will become 

 perhaps two feet, perhaps six feet, tall. It will put forth buds called 

 ' squares' ; then pretty cream-colored blossoms, changing with age 

 to rosy pink; then fruit called ' bolls.' The bolls, at first green, 

 will grow larger and turn brown. When ripe, they will open and 

 yield a harvest of soft white fiber, the cotton of which our clothing 

 is made. All this lies infolded in this grayish green, fuzzy seed. 



If the question be asked, " For what does the farmer grow the 

 cotton plant? " you answer readily, " For the sake of its fiber." 

 You know that, because his chief care is to save and use it. But 

 if you are asked why Nature raises the cotton plant, you find it 

 more difficult to answer. It is not for the graceful plant, nor the 

 pretty blossoms, nor the soft fiber. She lets all these return to the 

 soil. One thing she saves and uses, the seeds inwrapped in the 

 fiber, the seeds which bring forth new plants^ 



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