THE COTTON PLANT
LENA sat in her little chair holding her doll, and telling it a fairy tale which her aunt had told her the day before.
"Why don't you say it's a pretty story, Mamie?" said Lena to her dollie.
Then throwing it down, she said, "You are nothing but paper; you don't know anything," and ran away into her aunt's room.
"Dear me! I wish I had a real live doll—one that can hear when I talk to her," said Lena.
Her aunt saw that her little niece needed something to think about, and she asked her of what her doll was made. Lena said that one was made of paper and the other of rags. Her aunt then asked what rags are made of, and Lena, thinking she knew very well, said, "Of old clothes and things.
Lena had on a pink and white muslin dress, and her aunt asked if she could tell of what her dress was made.
"Cotton," says Lena
"Tell me all you know about cotton, how it grows, and how it is used," said Aunt Belle.
"I don't know much about it. Uncle John said that when he was South, he saw some field hands picking it and sending it to market.
Afterward it is made into cloth," said Lena
"Sit down, and I will tell you more about cotton. Girls and boys should know of what their clothes are made."
Lena drew her chair close to her aunt and listened attentively, for Aunt Belle is a good talker, and always interests the children.
"Cotton," she began, "grows from a seed. You have seen seed put into the ground, and after a few days of sunshine and moisture a little stalk shoots up.
This 'grows very fast, putting out little twigs and downy-covered leaves. Finally, little flower-buds begin to swell, and in a few days a yellow or dull purple blossom unfolds. The shrub is quite pretty as well as useful. It is not placed in the flower garden for ornament., but out in a field with thousands of others, where it ripens into fruit --not fit to eat, not delicious, juicy fruit, but white dry cotton shreds, very fine, so fine that to see how they look one must put them into water, and look through a microscope; then they see very fine, ribbon-like hairs, in clusters, and these fill the little pods—or capsules, as botanists call them—so full that they burst open, showing their snowy 'white fruit-cotton This is picked off and gathered into large bundles and sent away to be made into cloth. If you were to visit Lowell, Holyoke, or any large town, you would find mills with machinery for working up these little hairy ribbons into thread, paper, and cloth. Large quantities of cotton grow in the Southern States, and it is sent North, and into England and other countries. It grows in Egypt, India, and Africa, where the climate is hot. Cotton grew many hundreds of years before men became skillful enough to make it useful."
"I should like to see cotton-growing," said Lena. "I wonder how men ever learned to make it into paper and cloth."
"You know, Lena, that God puts all knowledge into the minds of men, and all the good into their hearts. You may some time go South and see the cotton fields; and when you learn how it grows, and think how wonderfully God has supplied our wants by showing men how to make this little plant useful, you will love God and worship him more fully than ever," said Aunt Belle.—
Zion's Herald.
Poplar Seeds
Poplar Tree fluff
Rabbit's Foot Clover fluff
