10 COTTON SELECTION ON THE FARM. 



common in the eastern part of the cotton beh, is a more or less com- 

 plete loss of lint. There are many degrees and stages of the bald- 

 seeded condition down to completely naked seeds with not a vestige 

 of fiber, either of fuzz or of lint. Naked seeds usually fall out on the 

 ground and germinate as soon as the bolls open, but the tendency to 

 produce the ''slick" seeds can continue to be transmitted through the 

 pollen, unless farmers learn to pull such plants out before they have 

 flowered. Naked-seeded plants represent not only a present loss 

 but a reduction of all future crops raised from the seed of fields in 

 which they have been allowed to remain. 



Completely naked seeds are rare, but seeds with no fuzz and very 

 sparse lint are very common and are usually accompanied by distinct 

 external differences in the plants that bear them. Many farmers who 

 would not allow weeds to grow in their fields harbor thousands of 

 degenerate cotton plants, each of which is likely to do much more 

 harm than a weed could possibly do. Every seed that is formed 

 as a result of crossing by the pollen of a degenerate plant repre- 

 sents one of the offspring of the degenerate plant quite as truly as 

 do its own seeds. 



HOW TO BECOME ACQUAINTED WITH A VARIETY. 



Many farmers who have become quite skillful in detecting differ- 

 ences in the lint and seed characters of cotton pay very little attention 

 to the plants themselves. They are in the condition of the general 

 pubhc that recognizes differences between fruits of different varieties 

 of apples, but lacks the skill of the apple grower who sees even more 

 differences between the various kinds of trees than between the ap- 

 ples they produce. Doubtless there are many people who can not 

 learn to appreciate such differences, but most of those who are willing 

 to use a Httle time in training their eyes are surprised to find that they 

 can readily distinguish differences that they have previously over- 

 looked entirely. The different kinds of cotton plants will cease to 

 look all alike and stand out as distinctly as different breeds of poultry 

 or other domestic animals. The differences of color that often help 

 to distinguish breeds of chickens are lacking, of course, in the cotton, 

 but it would not require a very skillful fancier to tell a white cochin 

 from a white leghorn or a white plymouth rock. 



The technical terms and elaborate measurements that are often 

 used in the scientific study of variations are calculated to give the idea 

 that it is a difficult matter to recognize the variations of plants in the 

 field. In reahty it is not so difficult as to recognize differences 

 between individuals of the same variety of sheep or poultry, and this 

 most farmers do. The making of scientific descriptions and meas- 

 urements of variations is an entirely different problem from that of 

 recognizing them in the field. 



IC'ir. 06] 



