fruits, like apples and peaches; and seeds and grains, like beans, wheat, and corn.

136. Suggestions for further study of plants used as food. Study No. 58. (Optional.) Visit a vegetable market, make a list of the various plant products sold for food, and arrange them in a table as follows:

Select one or more of the following topics for special study: wheat, corn, potatoes, oats, rice. Consult Bailey's " Cyclopedia of American Agriculture," Vol. II," Crops," any encyclopedia, or the publications of the U.S.

137. Uses of plants for flavoring extracts, beverages, and medicines. We saw in a previous section that many parts of plants are available for use as food by man. Because,

also, of the presence of various flavoring compounds in plants, the following products are valuable. For instance, vanilla extract is made from the vanilla bean, pepper from pepper berries, horse-radish from the root of the horse-radish plant, and ginger from an underground stem.

We are dependent, too, upon plants for many beverages. The coffee berry supplies us with coffee, tea leaves with tea, and from the pods

and seeds of the cocoa tree we obtain cocoa and chocolate. Grapes are used to make wines, from apples cider is prepared, and from grains of various

kinds other alcoholic liquors are produced. Quinine, the wellknown remedy for malaria, was formerly obtained from the bark of a tree known as cinchona, which grows in Peru. This medicine is now obtained almost exclusively from trees cul

tivated in India and other Eastern countries. The camphor tree furnishes camphor gum; from the juice of poppy fruits opium and morphine are obtained; whole plants like peppermint supply us with valuable medicines. In fact, enormous numbers of drugs are prepared from various parts of plants.

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138. Suggestions for further study of parts of plants used as drugs. Study No. 59. (Optional.)

Visit a drug store or consult an encyclopedia, e.g. Bailey's" Cyclopedia of American Agriculture," Vol. II, "Crops," and make a list of common drugs obtained from plants. Fill out in your note-book a table like the following:

139. Uses of plants for clothing. (Quoted from Bailey's "Cyclopedia of American Agriculture," Vol. II, "Crops.") "Fiber-producing plants are second only to food plants in agricultural importance. In continental United States, however, cotton, hemp, and flax are the only fiber plants cultivated commercially; and aside from cotton and hemp, most of the raw fibers used in our industries are imported."

"The cotton of commerce is the hair or fiber on seeds of plants belonging to the Mallow family. . . . The plants are mostly shrubby, more or less branching, and two to ten feet high. . . . The fruit consists of three- to five-celled 'bolls,' which open at maturity through the middle of the cells, each cell liberating seven to ten seeds covered with long fibers. The fiber is a tubular hairlike cell, 10 to 1200 of an inch in diameter, somewhat flattened and spirally twisted.

It is this latter characteristic which gives the cotton its spinning qualities. .

"Picking or gathering cotton in the fields is a heavy item of expense. It must be picked by hand, as no mechanical appliance for harvesting has yet been invented which gives satisfactory results in practical working. The amount of cotton that one person can pick in one day varies from one hundred to five hundred pounds,

depending on the skill of the picker. One man can very easily care for the cultivation of twenty acres of cotton, but it requires two to four pickers to harvest such a crop rapidly enough to pre

vent loss. This extra labor in harvest time is usually supplied by the wives and children of the laborers. The harvest season extends over a period of about four months, beginning August 15 to September 10, according to locality.

"Cotton is probably a native of the tropical and semi-tropical regions of both hemispheres. The earliest records of the Asiatics and Egyptians speak of it; Columbus found it growing abundantly in the West Indies, while other early explorers found it growing in Mexico and South America. . . . There is no region in the world which has such a favorable combination of suitable land, intelligent and plentiful labor, cheap capital and adequate transportation facilities for the cultivation of cotton as the cotton belt of the United States. It has been the chief source of supply of the cotton mills of the world, for in this section has been raised several times the quantity of cotton produced in all other countries of the globe. There are various other countries which seem to possess the soil and climatic requirements for its growth, but for various economic reasons the industry has not been greatly developed in them; however, a considerable quantity is produced in the following countries in the order named: India, Egypt, China, Italy, Turkey, Brazil, West Indies, Mexico, South America, Australia, and the South Sea Islands."

140. Further study of fiber-producing plants. Study No. 60. (Optional.) Select one or more of the following fiber-producing plants for further study: flax, hemp, jute, raffia, hat-straw. Consult Bailey's "Cyclopedia of American Agriculture," Vol. II, "Crops," or any encyclopedia. Determine (1) the parts of the United States (or of the world) in which the crop is raised in large quantity, (2) the amount and value of a year's crop, (3) methods of harvesting and preparing the crop for market.

II. THE USES OF FORESTS AND FOREST CONSERVATION

141. Uses of forests for fuel, lumber, and other commercial purposes. In the earlier days of our country's history all the fuel for heating, for running locomotives and other en