LXXXII 
NATURE’S IDEA OF COTTON 
I SN’T IT ODD that one of those tricks that plants play 
to get their seeds distributed has resulted in the pro¬ 
vision of clothes for half of mankind! 
A certain scrubby tree of the mallow family, cousin to 
the marsh mallow, growing in the tropics hundreds of 
thousands of years ago, found that it was not getting on 
as well as it might. 
It had a seed pod that opened like a hickory nut and 
let its seeds sift out. They fell on the ground and stayed 
there. They would have had a much better chance, how¬ 
ever, if they could have got scattered around. The prob¬ 
lem was to devise a scheme for getting them distributed 
far and near when they were ripe. 
This tree of the mallow family hit upon the idea of 
growing hairs on its seeds to give them wings. These 
fluffy hairs would furnish something of which the wind 
could get hold, to carry the seeds away. If enough of 
these hairs were grown about the seeds, they would pro¬ 
vide a light-weight ball that might float far on water. 
If this ball fell on the ground, some clumsy-footed ani¬ 
mal might strike it and knock it along. Anyway, this 
tree of the mallow family would grow plenty of these 
tiny hairs on its seeds and see what would happen. 
After this habit was well formed, man came along. In 
India and in Peru, on different sides of the world, man in 
the long ago found that he could take the fiber from 
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