18 



CIRCULAR NO. Ill, BUREAU OF PLANT INDUSTRY, 



DURANGO COTTON COMPARED WITH THE EGYPTIAN. 



On account of the present scarcity of Upland long-staple cotton 

 the Durango cotton enjoys a somewhat artificial and perhaps tem- 

 porary market advantage over the Egyptian. The scarcity of long- 

 staple Upland cotton is due largely to the fact that the presence 

 of the boll weevil interferes with the growing of the Peeler varieties 

 in the former centers of production in Mississippi and Louisiana. 

 Short-staple varieties have replaced the long staples in many dis- 

 tricts, but efforts are now being made to go back to the cultivation 

 of long staples on the basis of the new early varieties like the Colum- 

 bia, Foster, and Durango. A part of the deficiency is being made 

 good by the planting of Columbia and other early long-staple varie- 



t ies in the Piedmont region of the South 

 Atlantic States, but it may be several 

 years before an adequate supply of long 

 staples can be developed in this region. 

 Although the relative desirability of 

 the Durango or of Egyptian cotton for 

 the Imperial Valley and other irrigated 

 regions of the Southwest is likely to 

 fluctuate with the state of the market, 

 it will be very poor policy for cotton- 

 growing communities to make frequent 

 changes from one type of cotton to the 

 other. To learn the methods of grow- 

 ing, selecting, handling, and marketing 

 either type to the best advantage is 

 likely to require several years, so that 

 a change from one to the other must be 

 a very expensive operation. Scarcity of 

 labor and the higher cost of picking are 

 local factors that now stand seriously in 

 the way of developing community pro- 

 duction of the Egyptian cotton in the Imperial Valley and make it 

 appear preferable to adopt the Durango. Even though the individual 

 farmer may not agree with his neighbors regarding the variety or 

 type of cotton that should be grown, he is likely to gain more by 

 growing the community variety than by producing a small quantity 

 of some other kind of cotton that he is unable to sell to advantage. 



SPECIAL CHARACTERS OF DURANGO COTTON. 



In addition to the features to which reference has been made in the 

 preceding paragraphs, several other characteristics of Durango cotton 

 are w'orthy of mention. 



[Civ. 11 1 I 



Fig. 4.— Boll of Durango cotton, with 

 involucre, showing relatively small 

 bracts. (Natural size.) 



