No machine for picking cotton has ever yet been perfected, but the South is looking to the time when some second Eli Whitney will arise who will solve the problem of gathering this important crop.

The cotton may be carried directly to the gin from the field, or it may be stored in the field in a pen, or at home in a cotton house until the rush of the picking season is over, when it can be hauled to the gin.

At the gin the cotton is "ginned," that is, the seed and the lint are separated. The lint is then packed into bales weighing about five hundred pounds each, and the seeds are either sold or carried home to be used as fertilizer for the land, or as feed for stock.

If the price offered at the time of harvesting is satisfactory, the cotton is usually sold at once; if not, it is carried home and stored, or placed in a cotton warehouse until the price advances.

Cotton bales absorb very little moisture, but, nevertheless, they should not be left to the open weather, as the outer layer of cotton will be damaged. If left in the open, the bales should be placed on end and should rest on planks, rails, or timbers of some kind so as to be off the ground. They should also be covered over for protection from the rain.

The farmer will find a merchant, banker, or cotton buyer in almost any near-by town. If the cotton is to be exported, it is usually sent to a "compress" where it is subjected to very great pressure, the size of the bale being greatly reduced.

III

Cotton Seed

Admiring the soft, beautiful, downy cotton fiber in the boll, we forget that inside this fiber are the wonderful little cotton seeds. In each lock there may be found from six to twelve seeds and in each boll, from twentyeight to fifty. Sometimes when you are out in a cotton field, count the number of seeds in a lock and the number in a boll. Most cotton seeds have a kind of fuzz or down on them even after they are ginned, but there are varieties or kinds of cotton which turn out a black seed, as the Peterkin variety.

In ginning, enough cotton to make a bale of lint weighing five hundred pounds will usually yield one thousand pounds of seed. A few years ago cotton seed were not thought to be useful except to plant, to feed to stock, or to put into the soil as fertilizer. I can remember helping to operate a gin a few years ago; it frequently happened that farmers would bring their cotton to the gin, have it ginned, baled, and hauled away, and would leave the seed behind. The seed sometimes accumulated in such large quantities that they were in the way, and we would have to stop the gin and remove them.

Now, however, since we have learned to extract the oil, leaving the meal or cake in condition for either fertilizer or stock feed, and the hulls available for coarse stock feed, cotton seed have become valuable.

The value of this by-product of cotton to the farmers of the South has been great in the past few years, and increases from year to year. In 1908 the Bureau of Census

showed that the annual cotton seed product of the South was worth more than ninety million dollars. The greater portion of this ninety million dollars of value was, only a few years ago, unrecognized and permitted to go to waste. When the seed are carried to the oil mill, they are usually first put through a process by which the lint is removed from them. This product is spoken of as "linters" after it is taken off the seed, and is used for cotton padding and various other purposes. Then the seed go into the mill, and are reduced to oil, cottonseed meal, cottonseed cake, and cottonseed hulls. Probably at least half of the cottonseed crop of the South is annually manufactured into the above products. The remainder of the seed crop is used for planting, for fertilizers, and for stock feed.

vegetable matter.

Notes and Questions.

Describe the preparation of land for cotton. How deep should the plowing be done? Describe the making of the cotton bed. Describe the "planter." When is cotton planted? How is it cultivated? Describe" chopping.”

What can you say of cotton picking? How are lint and seed separated? What can you say about protecting baled cotton? What can you say about the number of seed in a cotton boll? How was cotton seed once considered? What is now done with it? Describe the process of making cottonseed oil. Of what use is cottonseed oil? What effects would the invention of a successful cotton-picking machine have in the South?

LINCOLN ON THE FARM

Squire Josiah Crawford was seated on the porch of his house in Gentryville, Indiana, one spring afternoon when a small boy called to see him. The Squire was a testy old man, not very fond of boys, and he glanced up over his book, impatient and annoyed at the interruption. "What do you want here?" he demanded.

The boy had pulled off his raccoon-skin cap and stood holding it in his hand while he eyed the old man.

"They say down at the store, sir," said the boy, “that you have a 'Life of George Washington.' I'd like mighty well to read it."

The Squire peered closer at his visitor, surprised out of his annoyance at the words. He looked the boy over, carefully examining his long, lank figure, his tangled mass of black hair, his deep-set eyes, and large mouth. He was evidently from some poor country family. His clothes were homemade, and the trousers were shrunk until they barely reached below his knees.

"What's your name, boy?" "Abe Lincoln, son of Tom Creek."

asked the Squire.

Lincoln, down on Pigeon

The Squire said to himself, "It must be that Tom Lincoln who, folks say, is a ne'er-do-well and moves from place to place every year because he can't make his farm support him." Then he said aloud to the boy, "What do you want with my 'Life of Washington'?"

“I've been learning about him at school, and I'd like to know more."

The old man studied the boy in silence for some moments; something about the lad seemed to attract him. Finally he said, "Can I trust you to take good care of the book if I lend it to you?"

"As good care," said the boy, "as if it was made of gold, if you'd only please let me have it for a week."

His eyes were so eager that the old man could not withstand them. "Wait here a minute," he said and went into the house. When he returned he brought the coveted volume with him, and handed it to the boy. "There it is," said he; "I'm going to let you have it, but be sure it doesn't come to harm down on Pigeon Creek."

The boy, with the precious volume tucked tightly under his arm, went down the single street of Gentryville with the joy of anticipation in his face. He could hardly wait to open the book and plunge into it. He stopped for a moment at the village store to buy some calico his stepmother had ordered and then struck into the road through the woods that led to his home.

The house which he found at the end of his trail was a very primitive one. The first home Tom Lincoln had built on the Creek when he moved there from Kentucky had been merely a "pole-shack" — four poles driven into the ground with forked ends at the top, other poles laid crosswise in the forks, and a roof of poles built on this square. There had been no chimney, only an open place for a window and another for a door, and strips of bark and patches of clay to keep the rain out. The new house was a little better; it had an attic, and the first floor was