which is extensively cultivated in the southern parts of the United States, in India, China, and other warm countries. 3. The most esteemed variety of the herb-cotton is that known by the name of sea-island cotton, which is of long staple, its fiber being much longer than that of any other description, and of a fine, silky texture. It is an annual plant, and derives its name from the circumstance of its being cultivated with great success in the low sandy islands which lie along the coast of South Carolina. 4. Herb-cotton attains a hight of from eighteen to twentyfour inches. Its leaves are of a dark green color. The blossom expands into a pale yellow flower, which falling off, a pointed, triangular pod appears. This gradually increases to the size of a large hickory nut, and becomes brown as the woolly fruit ripens. The expansion of the wool then causes the pod to burst, when there appears a ball of snowy white or yellowish down adhering to the seeds. The appearance of a cotton-field while the pods are progressively opening is highly interesting, the fine, dark green of the leaf contrasting beautifully with the brilliant white of the cotton suspended from the pods, and floating to and fro at the bidding of the wind. 5. Shrub-cotton grows in most countries where the annual herb-cotton is found. In the West Indies, its duration is about two or three years; in India, Egypt, and some other places, it lasts from six to ten years. In the hottest countries it is perennial, and furnishes two crops a year. In cooler climates it is annual. In appearance it is much like a currant-bush. Tree-cotton grows in India, China, Egypt, and in the interior and on the western coast of Africa, and in some parts of America. It attains a hight of from twelve to twenty feet. 6. Great care is bestowed, in the Southern States, upon the cultivation of the cotton-plant. The seed is sown by hand in March, April, or May, according to the season. It is planted in rows five feet asunder, and in holes eighteen inches apart, in each of which several seeds are placed. As the plants come up, the weakest are drawn out, only two or three being left in each hole. 7. Good cotton can not be produced without constant care and attention up to the time of flowering. In India the mode of cultivation is very slovenly, and little or no care is bestowed on the plant; the consequence of which is, that the product is greatly inferior to that of the United States. 8. The operation of gathering the cotton requires much care. The gatherers, consisting chiefly of women and young people, go into the field with baskets or bags suspended from their shoulders for the reception of such portions of the wool as they find sufficiently ripe. The usual method is to take away the seeds and cotton, leaving the empty husks. 9. The gathering is always performed in fine weather, after the morning dew has disappeared, as any moisture would make the cotton moldy, and cause the oil of the seed to spread over the wool. The cotton is more completely dried by exposure during several days to the heat of the sun, or of stoves, on a platform of tiles or wood, whereby the seeds are afterwards more easily separated. As the cotton does not all ripen at the same time, the gatherers have to go over the same plantation many times. If it is not gathered soon after the pods have burst, the heat of the sun injures its color, or it may be blown away by the wind, or spoiled by the rain or dew. 10. The progress of the cotton manufacture in England and the United States is one of the marvels of the age; and the vast amount of capital and labor now employed in it leads us naturally to rank the cotton-plant among the most valuable and important vegetable substances with which the earth is so bountifully furnished by the beneficent Creator. WORD ANALYSIS AND DEFINITIONS. Ad here' (ad, to; here, to stick), to cleave to; to be attached to. Boun'ti ful ly, plentifully; abundantly. Be nef'i cent (bene, good; ficent, doing), doing good; kind. Man u fact'ure (manu, a hand; facture, making), making by hand Per en'ni al (per, through; enni [used for anni], years), lasting from year to year. Sta'ple, the thread of wool, cotton, or flax. Text'ure (text, to weave; ure, that which is), that which is woven; a web. LESSON XIX. THE INVENTION OF THE COTTON-GIN. 1. Toward the end of the eighteenth century, when it seemed that the limit of American cotton cultivation had been fully reached, an event occurred which speedily revolutionized the industry of our slaveholding States, and the commerce and manufactures of the world. This was the invention of the cotton-gin by Eli Whitney. 2. Mr. Whitney graduated from Yale College in 1792, and directly engaged with a Mr. B., from Georgia, to proceed to that State and reside in his employer's family as a private teacher. On his way thither, he had as a traveling companion Mrs. Greene, widow of the eminent Revolutionary general, Nathaniel Greene, who was returning with her children to Savannah after spending the summer at the North. His health being infirm on his arrival at Savannah, Mrs. Greene kindly invited him to the hospitalities of her residence until he should become fully restored. Short of money and in a land of strangers, he was now coolly informed by his employer that his services were not required, he (Mr. B.) having employed another teacher in his stead! 3. Mrs. Greene hereupon urged him to make her house his home so long as that should be desirable, and pursue under her roof the study of the law, which he then contemplated. He gratefully accepted the offer, and commenced the study accordingly. Mrs. Greene happened to be engaged in embroidering on a peculiar frame known as a tambour. It was badly constructed, so that it injured the fabric while it impeded its production. Mr. Whitney eagerly volunteered to make her a better one, and did so on a plan wholly new, to her great delight and that of her children. 4. A large party of Georgians, from Augusta and the plantations above, soon after paid Mrs. Greene a visit, several of them being officers who had served under her husband in the Revolutionary War. Among the topics discussed by them around her fireside was the depressed state of agriculture, and the impossibility of profitably extending the culture of the green-seed cotton, because of the trouble and expense incurred in separating the seed from the fiber. These representations impelled Mrs. Greene to say: "Gentlemen, apply to my young friend, Mr. Whitney; he can make anything." 5. She thereupon took them into an adjacent room, where she showed them her tambour-frame and several ingenious toys which Mr. Whitney had made for the gratification of the children. She then introduced them to Whitney himself, extolling his genius and commending him to their confidence and friendship. In the conversation which ensued, he observed that he had never seen cotton nor cotton-seed in his life. He promised nothing, and gave but little encouragement, but immediately went to work. 6. No cotton in the seed being at hand, he went to Savannah, and searched there among warehouses and boats until he found a small parcel. This he carried home and secluded with himself in a basement room, where he set himself to work to devise and construct the implement required. Tools being few and rude, he was constrained to make better, drawing his own wire, because none could at that time be bought in the city. 7. Mrs. Greene and her next friend, Mr. Miller, whom she afterward married, were the only persons beside himself who were allowed to enter his workshop, in fact, the only ones who clearly knew what he was about. His mysterious hammering and tinkering in that solitary cell were subjects of great curiosity, marvel, and ridicule among the younger members of the family. But he did not intertere with their merriment, nor allow them to interfere with his enterprise; and, before the close of the winter, his machine was so nearly completed that its success was no longer doubtful. 8. Mrs. Greene, too eager to realize and enjoy her friend's triumph, in view of the existing stagnation of Georgian industry, invited an assemblage at her house of leading gentlemen from various parts of the State, and on the first day after their meeting, conducted them to a temporary building erected for the machine, in which they saw with astonishment and delight that one man, with Whitney's invention, could separate more cotton from the seed in a single day than he could without it by the labor of months. 9. Reports of the nature and value of Whitney's invention were widely and rapidly circulated, creating intense excitement. Multitudes hastened from all quarters to see his original machine; but, no patent having yet been secured, it was deemed unsafe to gratify their curiosity; so they broke open the building by night, and carried off the wonderful prize. Before he could complete his model and secure his patent, a number of imitations had been made and set to work, deviating in some respects from the original, in the hope of thus evading all penalty. 10. Mr. Whitney's patent expired in 1808, leaving him a poorer man, doubtless, than he would have been if he had never listened to the suggestions of his friend, Mrs. Greene, and undertaken the invention of a machine, by means of which the annual production of cotton in the Southern States has |