Page:Collier's New Encyclopedia v. 03.djvu/213

COTSWOLD HILLS Andes, being a perfectly symmetrical truncated cone, presenting a uniform, unfurrowed field of snow of resplendent brightness. Several terrific eruptions of it occurred in the course of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th century. The most recent eruption was in 1903.  COTSWOLD HILLS, a range of hills in England, county of Gloucester, which they traverse N. to S. for upward of 50 miles; extreme elevation near Cheltenham, 1,134 feet. The Cotswold sheep are a breed of sheep remarkable for the length of their wool.  COTTON, a vegetable hair or filament constituting the wing of the seed of the different species of Gossypium, a plant belonging to the order of Malvaceæ, growing both in the temperate and tropical climates, indigenous in Asia, Africa, and South America. Both fiber and seed are produced in pods not unlike the outer shell of the walnut. When the seed approaches maturity the fiber in which it is enveloped, which had previously been in a cylindrical form filled with watery sap, becomes dry. The sap is then deposited upon the walls of the outer cell, which then collapses longitudinally and takes on a spiral form slightly blunt at the point where it is attached to the seed, and pointed at the end. In the green-seed variety, the one chiefly cultivated, it is of a white or yellowish hue, soft, flexible, and a non-conductor of heat. The fiber consists chiefly of carbonaceous material drawn from the atmosphere, and is one of the purest forms of cellulose. Although cotton-seed, which is produced at the ratio in weight of two and a half to three parts of seed to each one of fiber, has long been the source of valuable oils and food for cattle in Egypt and India, the cotton-seed of the United States was in former days mostly wasted. It has now become a secondary product of very great value. Tree cotton (G. arboreum) is found in India, China, Egypt, on the W. coast of Africa, and in some parts of America, especially in the West Indies. It only attains the height of from 12 to 20 feet; but another cotton-bearing tree (bombax ceiba), seen in the West Indies and elsewhere, familiarly called the umbrella tree, attains the height of 100 feet. The produce of the latter, however, is of a short and brittle fiber. Being unfit for spinning, it is only useful for stuffing pillows and beds. Shrub cotton (G. religiosum) occurs in one or other of its varieties throughout the tropical parts of Asia, Africa, and America. In appearance it resembles a currant-bush. Its duration varies ac c ording to the climate; in the hottest countries it is perennial, while in cooler places it becomes an annual. The Guiana, Brazil, and most of the West India cotton, is of this kind, the whole being long-stapled.

Herbaceous cotton (G. herbaceum), commonly called the green-seed variety, is far the most useful and important of the three kinds noticed. It is an annual plant cultivated in the United States,