166 
ANNALS OF THE BOTANICAL SOCIETY OF CANADA. 
The " baling" of the cotton, which is accomplished generally by a single but 
powerful screw, ends the labor of its production on the plantation. The " baling" 
once completed, the cotton is ready for exportation. 
One thousand pounds of " seed-cotton" to the acre, which makes two-thirds of 
a bale of " ginned-cotton" of four hundred and fifty pounds, is considered a very 
large yield, but it is but seldom that any land remunerates so well the labor of the 
planter. 
In the greater part of India, the use of machinery for the purpose of separat- 
ing the cotton from the seeds, is unknown ; and all the cotton is picked by hand. 
A man can scarcely by this method, separate more than one pound of cotton in a 
day. By this we see the great service which the "cotton gin" performs, for by its 
aid about three hundred weight af cotton may be cleaned in a day, not partially, 
but entirely, and although it injures to a certain extent the fibre of cotton, still all 
the cotton grown in the Southern States (the sea-island alone excepted), is cleaned 
by its means. 
We have seen, in the foregoing pages, that the productions of the cotton plant 
have not acquired their present high standing without a long and an arduous strug- 
gle, — before history was the cotton plant flowered, aud yet it was but very recently 
that cotton cloth became so necessary to human comfort, or even was known as an 
article of commerce. 
How finely it illustrates the vast resources of the Divine power, which from an 
apparently useless shrub, gives employment to millions of beings, and sustains even 
nations by its cultivation and its produce. 
In that portion of the subject which relates more especially to Great Britain, 
and in which is pointed out the rise and rapid progress of the manufacture iuto cloth 
of the raw material produced from the cotton plant, we have indulged in a few 
statistics in order that we might prove at once the rapidity with which the demand 
for the produce arose in England, and the equal progress of the cultivation of the 
plant in the Southern States of America. In one year Great Britain received no 
cotton wool at all from that source, but a few years elapsed and her chief reliance 
was on the South. 
There are many who hold the opinion that the East Indies will yet be enabled 
to furnish the manufacturers of Great Britain with a sufficiency of the raw material, 
but ideas are often delusive, and the opinion, although gaining ground, remains to 
be proved. 
In Africa also, the cultivation of the cotton plant is receiving more attention ; 
and in far-off New South Wales, it is hoped that the plant may flourish, aud become 
a great export aud source of wealth to the Colony. 
F. R. STANTON, QiLeen's College. 
