a great plantation. One of her discoveries was that the pretty white blossom of Monday was pink or purple on Tuesday. But the dainty flower had but a short life, dropping to pieces at the end of the second day, leaving only a tiny pod about the size of a bean.

Margie watched this pod with great interest, until in about six weeks it had grown to be almost as large as a peach. Then, one morning, when she ran out of doors, a wonderful sight met her eyes. All over the field the pods had burst open, each showing a soft puff of cotton down, as white as snow. This light, woolly substance kept the little seeds dry and warm.

Soon the cotton pickers began their work, and Margie spent most of the morning watching the negro men, women, and children pass up and down, gathering the soft, snowy fibers, and heaping high the baskets or bags which they carried.

But the sun was shining now with great force, and after picking several pods for herself, Margie took them back to the cool piazza, where her mother and Aunt Helen were sitting.

As she played with the soft bolls, she felt the hard seeds within them.

"How do they get the seeds out, mother?" she asked. "Please tell me all about it." So her mother told her the rest of the story.

"You know, Margie, that Columbus found cotton growing in the West India Islands on his first voyage, but it was many years later before it began to be cultivated in what is now the United States. It soon became a profitable industry, but the task of getting the seeds out was a very slow one. It took one man an entire day to remove the seeds from a single pound of cotton.

"But in 1793 Eli Whitney, a young man from New England who had been a teacher in Georgia, invented a machine which would pull the cotton between rollers through which the seeds could not pass. By the use of this new invention, a man could clean two hundred pounds a day instead of

one.

"This was, of course, a great advantage to the cotton-growing section, and since then the cultivation of cotton has increased so steadily that the

United States now produces four fifths of the cotton grown in the world. The cotton crop of our

country each year is worth about five times as much as the gold mined during the same time. All the Southern states raise it, the great state of Texas producing more than any other.

"But the rest of the cotton plant is not wasted. The seeds are made into oil, meal, cottolene, and soap, while the stalks furnish cattle food and fertilizers.

"The South is beginning to manufacture some of its own cotton, but the largest factories are in the North. When we get home, I will take you through one.

"Now do you see why the South is called the 'land of cotton,' and why the people so often say 'Cotton is king'?"

"Yes," answered Margie, "and as a king may tell his subjects what to do, I suppose that is what Aunt Helen means when she says she will come to see us this fall if the cotton crop is good."

Her mother laughed as she replied, "Yes; and

as there is every prospect of an unusually good crop, I think Aunt Helen will be with us when we go to the factory to find the end of this long spool of cotton."

PEANUTS AND THEIR USES

"PEANUTS! Peanuts! Fresh roasted peanuts, only five cents a pint!" shriek the men at the

peanut stands to the peo

ple going into the big circus tent.

Some from South Africa, where the elephant, the

giraffe, the hippopotamus, and the hyena live;

and some from South America, where the jaguar, the armadillo, and the boa constrictor live.

The American peanuts are said to be the descendants of some Spanish ones which were brought over by the followers of Columbus. They grew so well in the light southern soil, that now the states of North Carolina, Virginia and Tennessee grow so many more than we need for home use, that large quantities are exported to Europe. "Five cents a pint! Only five cents a pint!" yell the boys.

I wonder if they know that over ten millions of dollars are made from the peanut crop every year?

One factory in the Southern states handles over twenty tons daily. You can see how much money is made by one day's receipts, if you can solve this problem: