in every part of the world and by nearly all
peoples. Cotton is used mainly also for body coverings, but it is
inferior to wool for protection against cold. It is used by practically
all peoples, savage and civilized, outside of the frigid zones. Linen
is inferior both to cotton and wool for clothing; its use is also
restricted by its great cost. Silk is used mainly for ornamental cloths.
Hemp is used mainly for cordage, and the use of ramie, jute, and sisal
hemp is confined mainly to the manufacture of very coarse cloths and
rugs.

=Cotton.=--The cotton fibre of commerce is the lint surrounding the seeds
of several species of _Gossypium_, plants belonging to the same natural
order as the marshmallow and the hollyhock. The cultivated species have
been carried from India to different parts of the world, but
cotton-bearing plants are also native to the American. A native
tree-cotton, known as Barbados cotton, occurs in the West Indies; a
herbaceous cotton-plant is known to have been cultivated in Peru long
before the discovery of Columbus.

[Illustration: COTTON-PRODUCING REGIONS]

More than four hundred years before the Christian era Herodotus
describes it and mentions a gin for separating the lint from the seed.
Nearchus, an admiral serving under Alexander the Great, brought to
Europe specimens of cotton cloth, and in the course of time it became an
article of commerce among Greek and Roman merchants.

The cotton-plant requires warmth, moisture, and a long season. It also
thrives best near the sea. It grows better, on the whole, in subtropical
rather than in tropical regions, and the difference is due probably to
the longer days and higher temperature of the subtropical latitudes. In
the United States the northern limit is approximately the thirty-eighth
parallel. The seeds are planted, as a rule, during the first three weeks
of April and the first two of May. The plants bloom about the middle of
June; the boll or pod matures during July, and bursts about the first of
August. The picking begins in August.

[Illustration: COTTON IN THE UNITED STATES]

The yield and the quality of the textile depend not only on conditions
of the soil, but on locality. In the river flood-plains of the southern
United States the yield is about two bales per acre; on the bluff lands
it is but little more than one, unless unusual care is taken in the
preparation of the land. The islands off the Carolina coast produce a
very fine long-s