cotton picker

1. A machine for scutching cotton to tear apart the matted ma es and clean it. [COTTON-CLEANER.] 2. A machine for picking cotton from the bolls of the plant. One form consists of a traveling toothed belt, which catches the cotton fiber and drags it into a receptacle. ( Knight .) 1143 it tends to abort pregnant women, but this is but a suspicion, and has never had its foundation proven. (6) Cotton -seed planter : A planter in which the feed-motions are positive, as as the seed adheres by the interlacing of its fibers, and requires to be torn apart and driven down the chute to the ground. ( Knight .) cotton-spinning, a. Engaged in spinning cot ton. (Used of machines or of persons.) "'Go,' shrill'd the cotton-spinning chorus; 'him I Tennyson: Edwin Morris. choked.'" cotton-thistle, &. genus has representatives in both hemispheres. How many species exist is difficult to determine. They have been unduly multiplied in books. Some one or other is cultivated everywhere, from the equator to 36° N., and the same of S. latitude. In the United States the species cultivated is Go yp ium barb a dense. There are two well-marked var i eties: (1) The Sea-island, or Long-staple Cotton, introduced from the Bahamas in 1785, grown on the coast of Georgia and South Carolina, and the adjacent islands; and the Upland, Georgian, Bowed, or Short-staple Cotton, which grows in the Southern States generally. The former is the finer; the latter constitutes the bulk of the American cotton. Indian cotton is furnished by G. herbaceum . It grows in Persia, the Levant, Egypt, the south of Europe, . It is called Surats, from Surat, on the west coast of India, whence much of it is exported. The cotton of Brazil, Peru, and other parts of South America is derived from G. peruvianum . Cotton from the last two species is short staple.