The "rot" attacks the "boll.

On the walls were various branches of different species of vegetation; among others a tangle of twigs of the cotton plant, from which depended numerous bolls.

Ordinary-pickers grasp the boll with one hand and pluck out the cotton with the other.

Some proved worth while either in increasing the yield, or in producing larger bolls and thereby speeding the harvest, or in reducing the proportionate weight of the seed and increasing that of the lint; but the test of planting proved most of them to be merely commonplace and not worth the cost of carriage.

If it were laid upon the leaf, as was usually the case, it might be three days before the worm reached the boll; but were the eggs laid upon the involucre the worm pierced through within twenty-four hours after hatching.

When hatched from an egg which had been deposited upon a leaf, they invariably made their first meal on the substance of the leaf, and then wandered about for a longer or shorter space of time, evidently seeking a boll or flower bud.

Generations of Langdons had taken deepest pride in developing the hundreds of acres of cotton land, whose thousands of four-foot rows planted each April spread open the silvery lined bolls in July and August, and the ripened cotton fiber, pure white beneath the sun, gave from a distance the picture of an expanse of driven snow.

Skillful pickers work with both hands, never touching the bolls, but removing the cotton by a single dextrous twist of the fingers.

I have often watched the newly hatched boll while in the cotton fields.