In the eastern continent India was no doubt the principal cotton growing country; even China obtained its principal supply from that source. Not until about the ninth century of our era was cotton extensively cultivated in China. About the second century Arabian merchants brought cotton from India and began to cultivate it in the vicinity of the Red Sea, and from thence it gradually found its way into Spain about the sixteenth century, and from Spain into Italy and Greece. No one knows exactly when cotton began to be used and cultivated in the western continent; we know that it must have been used a long time before the discovery of America by Columbus, for reasons already given. Mexican and South American mummy cloth is found to consist largely of cotton. [Illustration: COTTON. (Gossypium barbadense.) FROM KŒHLER’S MEDICINAL-PFLANZEN.] Description of Plate.—A, B, branch of cotton plant; 1, sepal; 2, flowering bud; 3, petal; 4, 5, stamen; 6, pollen grain; 7, pistil; 8, 8a, 9, flower; 10, 11, 12, immature fruit; 13, ripe fruit; 14, 15, seed. Cotton is now extensively cultivated in the warmer countries of both hemi-spheres—in the southern United States since the sixteenth century. The cotton plant is in reality a perennial, becoming quite shrubby with age, but in cultivation it is treated as an annual, being grown from seeds planted each spring. Three or four seeds are planted to each hill, the hills being about three feet apart. After sprouting the weaker individuals are removed, and at the end of three or four months the remaining carefully cultivated plants are pruned to make them more spreading and give a better yield of cotton. The plants grow quite rapidly, the cotton maturing about five months after planting. With the exception of the pruning, the planting and cultivation of cotton in the southern states is not unlike the planting and cultivation of corn in the middle states. The cotton is picked by hand into bags or baskets, spread out and dried, and finally carted to the cotton gin, a machine invented by Eli Whitney (1793), which separates the fibers from the seeds. The cotton is now pressed into bales, weighing from 400 to 500 pounds, for shipment. The cotton fiber is subjected to further processes of cleaning, carding, etc., before it is ready to be manufactured into cloth fabrics, thread, etc.