COTTON-WOOL. 



425 



The quality of cotton first picked is always the cleanest Apptndix. 

 and best. To save trouble, it is customary with some 

 planters to defer picking out any of the crop till the whole 

 of the bolls be ripe, and have expanded and become dry 

 by the influence of frost or cold weather. This plan is 

 to be deprecated, for the bolls open most irregularly: 

 those first expanded are left to be injured by rains, dews, 

 and decayed leaves, &c. When the crop is picked from 

 the boll, it is spread over the floor of a room (should the 

 cotton be damp) till it is dry, and is then sent to the gin, 

 when the seed is extracted from the fibre. During the 

 first week in August, some planters, when the crop is not 

 too extensive, top each plant to the first eye, leaving six 

 branches only to bear. This increases the quantity and 

 quality, but forces the plant to throw out suckers, which 

 are most difficult to keep under. 



Stiff clayey soils require more seed than light sandy 

 ones. The plant being very delicate, requires the united 

 efforts of several shoots to force its way through the sur- 

 face, which often becomes packed and hard. Where seed 

 is abundant, a large handful should always be sown in 

 each hole ; where it is scarce and the land light, a small 

 quantity may suffice. Two hundred English acres would 

 require from eight hundred to one thousand bushels of 

 seed-cotton. 



An acre will produce from one thousand six hundred to 

 two thousand pounds of seed-cotton, or four hundred to 

 five hundred pounds of clean or ginned cotton ; but this is 

 alarge yield. Generall}^, on average soil*:, from one thousand 

 two-hundred to one thousand six-hundred pounds of seed- 

 cotton, or cotton in the seed, are produced to the acre. 

 Our bales weigh from three hundred and fifty to four 

 hundred pounds. 



