Cotton Growing. 181 
sharp heavy hoes or adzes. In January or February the seed 
is sown; and it is so distributed that when the plants have 
grown up they will be in rows, having sufficient space between 
them to allow the gatherer to pass up and down. The seeds 
quickly germinate, and the plant grows rapidly. When it is 
about two feet high it is topped, to preyent it growing out of 
reach of the cotton picker, and also to render the plant more 
sturdy and the lower branches more vigorous. 
In four or five months after sowing the seed, the first crop is 
ready for gathering ; and the plant bears regularly until November 
or thereabouts, during which time the picking goes on. When 
the plant has ceased to bear for the season, it is cut down to 
the roots, next year’s crop coming from the fresh shoots which 
spring up. Every three or four years the plants are renewed. 
After the cotton has been gathered by natives in baskets, it is 
spread out in the sun to dry, and is then taken to the gin 
house, where this useful little machine separates the floss from 
the seed ; after which the former is put up in bales and ex- 
ported, while the latter is culled to get seed for sowing, or is 
exported as a material furnishing oil of some value. 
A cotton plantation, when the pods are ripe and opening, 
has a very pretty appearance. There is something pleasing 
about the whole mode of growing and preparing cotton—it is 
so clean and so éasily managed. There is no washing neces- 
sary, as there is in wool; no greasy matter stains the spotless 
whiteness of the glossy cotton balls. There is no shearing, 
neither clipping nor cutting the producer in the endeavour to 
get the produce, as so often happens to the poor sheep in the 
hands of an ignorant shearer ; but quietly the plant opens its 
pod and displays its soft treasures, which are easily plucked 
out by the nimble fingers of the native pickers. 
Now for a few statistics with regard to cotton-growing here, 
for the benefit of the commercial man and the curious generally. 
