SCIENCE AND COTTON 307 



of tedious work might be economised through the elimination 

 of field trials in those localities which were obviously unsuitable. 



Apart from such specific problems, the modern study of the 

 physiology of growth is in its infancy, and much may be 

 expected of it. To carry out such work on cotton-seeds as a 

 supplement to similar work on beans, sunflowers, etc., needs 

 only such collaboration as would supply suitable seeds from 

 known strains of cotton. 



As regards the possibilities of investigation into the physical 

 properties of the lint and their relation to spinning-processes, 

 it is obvious that this can only be done in the spinning-mills 

 and in laboratories annexed to them. In this respect the 

 spinners may yet find it necessary to adopt the attitude of the 

 brewers and develop the testing-room into a centre of technical 

 control. It is not so obvious, or it does not seem to have been 

 so obvious in the past, that such work needs to be co-ordinated 

 with the grower also. A complete examination of a bale of 

 commercial cotton, tracing the modifications which it undergoes 

 in its passage through the mill, both in the properties of the 

 average lint-hair, and in the relative proportions of the various 

 hairs, would in itself be an interesting piece of work which — to 

 the best of the writer's belief — has not yet been fully accom- 

 plished. To do the same thing with two bales of two different 

 pure strains, or of the same pure strain grown in two different 

 sites, would not merely be interesting, but would be a contribu- 

 tion towards the establishment of some generalisations as to 

 the relation between yield and quality, as to the meaning of 

 quality, and as to the direction which steps for the improvement 

 of quality should take. 



Such investigations, co-ordinated between spinner and 

 grower, would follow some such directions as these : study of 

 the internal structure of the wall of the lint-hair, linking up 

 with chemical and physical researches already extant ; invention 

 of indirect methods for determining properties of the raw cotton 

 with more ease and less tedium than is at present necessary, so 

 that the time and labour required for precise determinations 

 should not be so enormous as to make their employment 

 ludicrous, when the expert grader can obtain fairly good results 

 in a few seconds ; from this one might reasonably hope to 

 resolve the common properties of the raw material into some 

 form of exact expression, and so to accumulate standards ; 



