COTTON 
83 
When the cotton fiber reaches maturity it as- 
sumes a tubelike appearance, somewhat irregular 
and flattened. 
Three classes of fibers are always found in every 
picking — unripe, half -ripe, and ripe. Of course 
the time of picking influences the relative percent- 
ages of each, though late picking of seed cotton will 
not entirely overcome the difficulty, since these 
three are differences in maturity of the filaments 
on different parts of the same seed. 
- Unripe cotton is thin and transparent, has little 
or no twist, and has little use in manufacture. 
This explains why cotton picked too early com- 
mands a lower price at the warehouse. 
THE COTTON BOLL. 
The boll is the house of seed and lint. In it are 
from three to five apartments or cells (often more 
than five in improved types) which hold the com- 
mercial product from the earliest formation of the 
lint after blooming until it is picked in the fall. 
As the seed and lint increase in size and quantity, 
the boll likewise enlarges to accommodate its grow- 
ing interior. When maturity is reached the 
doors of the apartment rooms open, lint and seed 
expand, and present the beautiful white, silky 
wool that is soon to be gathered and stored. 
It is a picture indeed, the full cotton field, white 
with its open bolls and ready for the harvest hands. 
The plant and the planters have almost ended 
their work, and the world now awaits the result 
not without interest. The pickers are in the field, 
early and late, gathering the white "tree wool" as 
fast as their hands can pluck it from the bolls. 
Here and there all about the picked territory, are 
