4 The Bulletin. 



per cent (17.5 per cent to cotton and 47.2 per cent to corn) of the 

 cultivated lands of JSTorth Carolina are devoted to these two crops 

 with the small average annual yields of 215 pounds of lint cotton and 

 12.8 bushels shelled com per acre. If by carefully conducted experi- 

 ments through a number of years the most advantageous distancing 

 and most prolific varieties of corn and cotton on the different types 

 of soil for an average season can be ascertained, and farmers gener- 

 ally be induced to use the best varieties and distances in growing 

 these crops, material assistance will have been rendered in increas- 

 ing the total amounts per acre of these crops grown in the State. 

 Increasing the average yield of corn one bushel and seed cotton fifty 

 pounds per acre will, according to the census of 1900, increase the 

 annual profits of the farmers of ISTorth Carolina by about $3,650,000, 

 allowing sixty cents per bushel for shelled corn and three and one-half 

 cents per pound for seed cotton. This does not appear, with the hearty 

 cooperation of farmers, such a far-distant possibility, in the light of 

 results obtained during the past seven years in our testing of varieties 

 of corn and cotton. Take, for example, the results of our . variety 

 tests at the Edgecombe farm^ during this time. In comparative 

 varietv tests of com, with the number of varieties in the different 

 tests varying from eight to thirty-two, we have found the differ- 

 ence between the one yielding the highest and the one the lowest 

 amount of shelled corn per acre in the individual tests to range 

 from 6.2 to 26.6 bushels. With cotton the range of difference in the 

 different tests has been all the way from 530 to 915 pounds of seed 

 cotton per acre, when from seven to twenty-six varieties were used 

 in the different tests. It must not be forgotten that the best distanc- 

 ing of any crop is principally dependent upon soil fertility, while 

 yield of variety is governed largely by soil fertility and adaptability 

 and by the rigidity with which selection of seed of desirable charac- 

 teristics has been made. 



LOCATION AND CHAKACTER OF SOILS OF TEST FARMS. 



Edgecombe Farm. — This farm is located in Edgecombe County, 

 about midway between the towns of Tarboro and Rocky Mount, and 

 about two miles from Kingsboro, a station on the Atlantic Coast 

 Line Railway. 



'The results at the Edgecombe farm are taken for these comparisons because, it being the old- 

 est farm, we have data for a greater number of years. 



