requirements of the following year, and the remainder is sent to oil
factories, where it is pressed, and yields about one-eighth of its
capacity in measurement in oil, the refuse, after pressing, being used
for manure. The ginning having been finished in the country districts,
the cotton is either packed in bales and sent to the dealers in the
cities, or else the next process, that of carding, is at once
proceeded with on the spot.

This process is almost as primitive as that of the ginning. A long
bamboo, sufficiently thin to be flexible, is fastened at its base to a
pillar or the corner of a small room. It slopes upward into the center
of the room, and from its upper end a hempen cord is suspended. To
this is fastened the "bow," an instrument made of oak, about five feet
in length, two inches in circumference, and shaped like a ladle. A
string of coarse catgut is tightly stretched from end to end of the
bow, and this is beaten with a small mallet made of willow, bound at
the end with a ring of iron or brass. The raw cotton, in its coarse
state, is piled on the floor just underneath the string of the bow.
The string is then rapidly beaten with the mallet, and as it rises and
falls it catches the rough cotton, cuts it to the required degree of
fineness, removes impurities from it, and flings it to the side of the
operator, where it falls on a hempen net stretched over a four-cornered
wooden frame. The spaces of the net are about one-quarter of an inch
square, and through these any particles of dust that may still have
adhered to the cotton fall to the floor, leaving piled on top of the
net the pure cotton wool in its finished state. This work is always
performed by a man, and by assiduous toil throughout a long day, one
man can card from ten to twenty pounds weight of raw cotton. Payment is
made in proportion to the work done, and in the less remote country
districts is at the rate of about one penny for each pound carded. As