An unopened boll.
(½ nat. size.)
A cotton field is most picturesque during the picking season, when the negroes, the women with bright kerchiefs over their heads, go into the fields, pick the cotton, and carry it away in large baskets.
A boll just opened.
(½ nat. size.)
Each cotton seed is covered with cotton fiber that clings very close and has to be removed by machinery. The machine that does this is called a cotton gin, and is a very interesting and wonderful machine.
A seed and its coat
of cotton.
(Nat. size.)
Cotton seeds are cleaned more than once; the first time the long fibers are pulled off, and this is the best of the cotton. Then the seeds are cleaned again of less valuable, because shorter, fibers, and finally of the short fuzzy coat that clings to them after the second cleaning. The result of the last cleaning is a very inferior cotton, used only for a few kinds of cheap cloth.
Not all cotton has white fiber. The Nankin cotton, which is grown near the mouth of the Mississippi River in this country, is naturally of a light tan color.