Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 40.djvu/691

Rh or wet season, rich soil and long, wet winters producing more weeds and requiring more attention. So far as tillage is concerned, this chopping out of the weeds and sprouts is the nearest approximation to cultivation the plants receive, and the soil naturally becomes as hard as a brick.

—While Brazil is the home of the cotton plant, it is at the same time the home of insects affecting that plant. Besides the "cotton-worm" (Aletia argellacea), which occurs in that country at times in vast swarms very much as it does in the Southern States, there are other moths whose larvæ attack the cotton in a similar manner. The "boll-worm" (Heliothis armigera) is also a native of Brazil, and occasionally does great injury to the cotton crop. But, while these insects exist in Brazil under climatic conditions more favorable to their multiplication than are those of the United States, these favorable circumstances are offset very materially by the vast number of insect enemies which these same climatic conditions foster. As a rule, the Brazilian planter feels himself utterly at the mercy of Fate when the "cotton-worms" attack his crop. No remedies for the evil are known, and none are ever attempted. They seem to think that to combat the plague would be to "fly in the face of Providence"; that when God wishes it stopped he'll send rains and stop it himself. The percentage of loss through these insects varies greatly, but I have known of many instances of a loss of fifty per cent of the crop. Such a loss, however, is unusually large for that country.

—Cotton-picking does not assume the importance in Brazil that it does in the Southern United States. Fields are never large, and picking is done more at the leisure and convenience of the planter. With the varieties of tree cotton there is but little risk of loss in leaving the ripe cotton in the bolls longer than could be done with the herbaceous variety, for the seeds of the former, being more compact when they ripen, do not cause the fiber to thrust the mass in a loose flock from the boll, as is the case with the latter. The cotton-pickers carry baskets or bags with them, in which the cotton is placed as it is gathered, very much as is the custom in this country.

—What kind of a gin to use has been a question of importance among Brazilian planters. The question was not between the various kinds of saw-gins, but between saw-gins and the old-fashioned way of cleaning cotton with two small wooden cylinders revolving close to each other.

The roller-gin is simply two short wooden cylinders, less than an inch in diameter, geared together and revolved close to each other after the fashion of a modern clothes-wringer. The raw cotton is fed slowly between the cylinders, and the seeds are removed by being pinched from the cotton and thrust back on the side from