Vol. V. No. 103. 



THE AGRICULTURAL NEWS. 



103 



THE GRADING OF SEED-COTTON. 



West Indian Sea Island cotton lias acquired a reputation 

 for quality that creates a demand for it when otlier long- 

 staple cottons find a dull or indifferent market. Tlie quality 

 on wliich this reputation is based can be maintained only by 

 careful attention to cultural methods. These should be 

 supplemented by tlie most careful grading of the seed-cotton, 

 and nothing but the very best should be allowed to leave the 

 estate as first grade cotton. Second and third grade cotton 

 will be worth no more when mixed with the better grades, 

 while the fir.st grade cotton will fetch only the price of the 

 inferior grades, if mixed with them. 



Toward the end of the picking season, much of the lint 

 produced is extremely weak. As it is impossible to separate 

 the weak from the strong fibres, it will be best to keej) this 

 late-jncked cotton separate from that produced earlier in the 

 season, which has a much smaller proportion of weak fibres, 

 and would, therefore, be a much stronger cotton. This, 

 late-picked cotton together with any pickings that have 

 been noticed as especially weak during the earlier part of 

 the season, should make the second grade. 



Stained cotton, and that which has never properly 

 opened and comes in from the field matted about the seed, 

 would go to make a third grade. 



It is very important that seed-cotton bought from small 

 growers should be placed in difiFerent classes, according to 

 the length of staple. It is a comparatively easy matter to 

 determine the length of the fibres ; other qualities usually 

 vary with the length, the longest fibres being usually the 

 finest and silkiest. 



Any particular bale, in whicli the cotton is not uniform 

 in length, is considerably reduced in value. All purchases of 

 the same length should be put together, unless they differ 

 considerably in other respects and each bag should be 

 marked to show its grade. 



The machinery in a spinning factory is adjusted to 

 spin cotton of a certain length, and all fibres shorter than 

 that for which the machines are adjusted go into waste, 

 while the longer ones are likely to be broken. This causes 

 a loss in two ways : the amount of waste is greatly 

 increased, and the broken fibres produce very much weakened 

 threads. 



A careful scheme of grading, based on lines similar to 

 those indicated above, should be of great value in establishing 

 the cotton industry in the West Indies. 



ANTHRACNOSE OF COTTON. 



This disease, which is caused by a fungus {Collctotrichum 

 (/ossi/pii), is one of the few fungoid diseases of cotton that 

 occur in the West Indies. It causes damage when it attacks 

 the cotyledons of the young plants, or the bolls of cotton. 

 At times, the disease has been known in the cotton districts 

 of the United States to cause a loss of 10 to 1.5 per cent, of 

 the total crop ; but, up to the present, it has not done any 

 great damage in these islands. For the purpose of keeping 

 this disease in check, all planters of cotton are recommended 

 carefully to disinfect their cotton seed before planting, so as 

 to prevent the germination of any spores which remain 

 attached to the seed itself. If this be carefully attended to, 

 no disease of cotyledons in .seedling plants should occur. 

 Itatooning of cotton should be entirely abandoned, as the 

 practice of ratooning tends to the development and spread of 

 plant diseases. 



With the view of obtaining information respecting any 

 experiments that had been performed by the United States 

 Department of Agriculture, dealing with the treatment of 



anthracnose of cotton, the Imperial Commissioner of Agri- 

 culture has been in communication with Mr. B. F. Galloway, 

 Chief of the Bureau of Plant Industry. The following 

 extract is taken from a letter from Mr. Galloway and 

 contains valuable information : — 



' This disease has been the subject of some minor experi 

 ments by this Department, but, so far as I know, no serious 

 attempts to control it by the use of fungicides have ever been 

 undertaken. At the present time, no combative measures 

 are generally practised in this country. The disease is rather 

 common, but is not generally sufficiently injurious to make 

 it profitable to go to much expense in the way of treatment. 



The recommendations that we make to our planters 

 are : — 



(1) To avoid seed from infested fields ; as we find 

 that, like other anthrancnoses, the fungus penetrates the seed 

 and is carried in it. 



(2) To plant such varieties as local experience has 

 shown to be least affected by anthracnose. 



(3; To give the plants more space, so as to admit light 

 and air, and to use fertilizers containing more potash and 

 jjhosphorous than nitrogen, in order to produce a hardier 

 and less succulent growth.' 



The first two recommendations and the first part of the 

 third are applicable to the West Indies. They should 

 be carefully attended to so as to prevent the disease from 

 becoming at all serious in the islands. Experiments with 

 the use of aitificial manures, and their relation to this 

 disease might be conducted next planting season in order to 

 obtain e.xact information on this point ; for, up to the 

 present, the relation between artificial manures and disease 

 has not been fully worked out in the "\\'est Indian Islands. 



Articles on the disinfection of cotton seed for the purpose 

 of killing any adherent spores have repeatedly appeared in the 

 Agricultural Ntws (Vol. Ill, pp. 117 and 149 ; and Vol, 

 TV, p. 101), and further reference will be made to 

 it in the future, when the experiments of the Imperial 

 Department of Agriculture, dealing with this subject, will 

 have been conrpleted. 



THE WORLD'S RUBBER SUPPLY. 



In its issue of January last, the Journal of the 

 Society of Arts contains the following information on 

 the principal sources of rubber supply ; — 



At present, largely owing to the and encourage- 

 ment given by the Government and the Botanical Departments 

 at Kew aa(i Ceylon, and the easily available land in 

 the Malay Peninsula and other colonies, the British 

 rubber-planting industry leads the world. But elsewhere the 

 industry has grown, and is growing apace, notably in 

 Mexico. The Hindalgo Plantation and Commercial Company, 

 owning among others the famous La Zacualpa plantation, is 

 believed to have on that one estate something like 2,500,000 

 trees, and the Mexican Mutual Planters Company owns large 

 plantations of Castilloa elastica. In Liberia, there are vast 

 forests largely filled with rubber trees which are being 

 exploited by British capitalists ; and some efforts are being 

 made to increase the forest growth by planting in the West 

 Indian Islands, where climate and soil are very suitable. Java 

 is expected to export very large quantities of rubber in the 

 course of the next few years, and steps are being taken to 

 promote the growth of the rubber tree in the Philippines. 

 Altogether, it would seem that while the demand for rubber 

 is steadily and even rapidly increasing, the sources of supply 

 are being extended in at least an equal degree. 



