like Sir John Maundeville, misunderstood these reports and elaborated a
legend of a tree that bore live lambs as fruit. Here, for instance, is
how a French poetical botanist, Delacroix, described it in 1791, as
translated from his Latin verse:

Upon a stalk is fixed a living brute,
A rooted plant bears quadruped for fruit;
It has a fleece, nor does it want for eyes,
And from its brows two wooly horns arise.
The rude and simple country people say
It is an animal that sleeps by day
And wakes at night, though rooted to the ground,
To feed on grass within its reach around.

But modern commerce broke down the barrier between East and West. A new
cotton country, the best in the world, was discovered in America. Cotton
invaded England and after a hard fight, with fists as well as finance,
wool was beaten in its chief stronghold. Cotton became King and the
wool-sack in the House of Lords lost its symbolic significance.

Still two-thirds of the cotton crop, the seed, was wasted and it is only
within the last fifty years that methods of using it have been
developed to any extent.

The cotton crop of the United States for 1917 amounted to about
11,000,000 bales of 500 pounds each. When the Great War broke out and no
cotton could be exported to Germany and little to England the South was
in despair, for cotton went down to five or six cents a pound. The
national Government, regardless of states' rights, was called upon for
aid and everybody was besought to "buy a bale." Those who responded to