1. Hold a tuft of cotton fibers tightly between the fingers and thumb of each hand and pull apart with a jerk. What is your judgment of the strength of the staple (fiber)?
2. Loosen gently the fibers of one of the tufts you have pulled apart. What is the feel of cotton? the appearance as you hold it to the light?
3. Detach several fibers one by one. How does the length compare with that of the wool and mohair? Measure and record the length of three fibers.
4. How do cotton fibers compare in fineness with wool fibers?
5. Compare the elasticity of cotton with that of wool.
6. Examine the cotton fibers under the microscope. Observe that the enlarged fiber looks like a twisted ribbon. When the fiber was growing it was cylindrical in shape. When ripe the plant drew back its life-giving fluid from the fiber and it collapsed and twisted like a corkscrew. The twist is peculiar to the cotton, being present in no other fiber. The twist makes the cotton fiber suitable for spinning, helping to hold the short fibers together.
7. Read of the cotton plant from Textiles, chapter [ix].
8. The four chief cotton producing countries are the United States, Egypt, India, Brazil.
9. There are several classifications of cotton. The most common are Sea Island (in the lead); Egyptian (a close second); Uplands (that of the United States, southern part); and Peruvian.
10. Uplands is the most common cotton of our South.