82 THE DEVELOPMENT OF KAW COTTON 



finer properties of cotton might be partly due to regularity 

 of concentric structure, and to alternation of denser and looser 

 layers of cellulose, analogous with the grain of timber. 



Mr. Scott Taggart has raised a reasonable objection to 

 the view that the fibre twists upon itself, but it is doubtful 

 whether the objection is valid. He assumes that the 

 hairs would knot themselves together inextricably if this 

 were the case. As a matter of fact, they do knot them- 

 selves up a great deal, and now we recognize that the 

 cell does not collapse until the boll is opening, we can 

 allow them much more space to avoid one another than 

 when it was believed that the twist was put in while the 

 boll was still closed. A simple feature which seems to have 

 escaped notice in this connection is the expansion of the 

 seed-cotton when the boll opens. This is simply due to 

 the twisting of the individual fibres, and when any fibre 

 finds its freedom to twist opposed it necessarily pushes 

 away its outermost neighbour, who is on the line of 

 least resistance. The summation of all these little efforts 

 expands the seed-cotton into a fluffy " lock." Very thin- 

 walled cotton, which cannot exert a very powerful twist 

 on drying, ripens silky locks of seed-cotton, in which the 

 fibres run more parallel than in a more robust kind. 

 Taking into consideration the fact that a fibre removed 

 from the boll during the latter half of maturation does 

 twist when dried, the evidence is probably against Mr. 

 Scott Taggart's hypothesis of collapse without twisting, 

 as a whole ; but it is not improbable that the twist takes 

 place, as in pickled material, before the collapse which 

 reveals the convolutions (p. 79). 



The density of lint on the boll is determined when the 



