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Improvement of conditions would bring quick recuperation to the surviving stalks, which upon attaining their full growth became quite hardy; but undue moisture would then cause a shedding of the bolls, and the first frost of autumn would stop the further fruiting. The plants, furthermore, were liable to many diseases and insect ravages.
The cotton bolls ripened and opened in series, those near the center of the plant first, then the outer ones on the lower branches, and finally the top crop. If subjected unduly to wind and rain the cotton, drooping in the bolls, would be blown to the ground or tangled with dead leaves or stained with mildew.
"As You Like it" is a vagabond play, and, verily, if there waved in any wind that blows a forest peopled like Arden's, with an exiled king drawing the sweetest, humanest lessons from misfortune; a melancholy Jacques, stretched by the river bank, moralising on the bleeding deer; a fair Rosalind, chanting her saucy cuckoo-song; fools like Touchstone not like those of our acquaintance, my friends; and the whole place, from centre to circumference, filled with mighty oak bolls, all carven with lovers' names, if such a forest waved in wind, I say, I would, be my worldly prospects what they might, pack up at once, and cast in my lot with that vagabond company.
The cotton-plant, like the orange, has often on one stalk every possible growth; and often, on the same limb, may sometimes be seen the first-opened blossom, and the bolls, from their first development as "forms," through every size, until they have burst open and scattered their rich contents to the ripening winds.
Thus, in Scotland, we still hear of firlots, bolls, and mutchkins, notwithstanding that these antiquated measures were abolished upwards of twenty years ago. In short, it would appear that the change of popular denominations in weights, measures, and moneys, is one of the things which the law, in ordinary circumstances, has great difficulty in reaching.
As he passed in the latter days of the year, it is probable he saw merely the bolls that had been left unopened after frost had come, and that this was not the ordinary method for handling cotton. That considerable cotton was grown is evidenced by the fact that a part of Cooke's company purchased cotton blankets.
Orioles are among the few birds that evince a decided preference for weevils, and as they persistently hunt for the insects on the bolls, they fill a place occupied by no other birds.
Wrens hunt them out when concealed under bark or rubbish. Blackbirds catch them on the ground, as do the killdeer, titlark, meadow lark, and others; while orioles hunt for them on the bolls.
As for the industry in the Philippines, a Southern man, now connected with the Agricultural Department in Manila, said to me: "Cotton acts funny here. It runs to weed. I planted some and it opened five or six bolls a stalk and then quit: died down."
As the bolls of some of these trees are from two to three feet in diameter, it is no less clear that the dry land thus formed remained in the same condition for long ages.
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