18 CIRCULAR NO. 123, BUREAU OF PLANT INDUSTRY. 



The moisture content of ihv surface cotton was l().cS6 ])er cent in 

 one sample and 10.4 per cent in the other, while the two inner sam- 

 ples showed a moisture content of 10.26 and 10.85 per cent, respec- 

 tively. It is not surprising that this lack of variation in moisture 

 between the surface and the deeper cotton should occur, as compared 

 with the other piles in which moisture determinations were made. 

 The pile was built uj) gradually. The warm, dry cotton which had 

 remained in the sun each day until evening in the pickers' sheets had 

 had ample opportunity to dry out and went to the storage house in 

 this condition. 



THE EFFECT ON SEED GERMINATION OF TEMPERATURES DEVEL- 

 OPED DURING STORAGE. 



The germination of cotton seed is proverbially i)()oi- under the 

 usual conditions of handling and storage, and this accounts in a 

 large measure for the habitual use of about four times the quantity 

 of seed needed for a stand. In the days when most of the surplus 

 was composted for manure on the plantation, it was well understood 

 that only a little fermentation and heating need take place to pre- 

 vent any trouble from the germination of the seed so used. 



Our temperature observations at Bennettsville afforded oppor- 

 tunity for only a partial confirmation of this belief, bu~t germination 

 tests on seed from three lots having different temperature records 

 were made by the Seed Laboratory of the Bureau of Plant Industry, 



as follows: 



The first was from a composite sample of seed cotton taken from 

 the surface of pile 1 in bin A, previously described, about a week 

 after picking, the cotton having been spread on a loft floor mean- 

 time and subjected to no heating nor to any effect resulting from 

 bulking. The weather from the time of the opening of the first 

 bolls until picking had not been such as to cause any evident damage, 

 and the weather during the last week in September when the cotton 

 was picked was dry and in every way favorable. The sample was 

 kept in a i)erfectly dry room, brought to Washington at the close of 

 the Bennettsville work, and several hundred seeds were hand ginned 

 for the test. The first test showed a germin{\tion of 43.5 per cent 

 in seven days; a retest showed 64 per cent. There was some an- 

 thracnose in evidence in this field, but so far as known no other 

 apparent reason for the low percentage of germination. 



The second test was of seed taken from an earlier pickuig from the 

 same field, there being about 10,000 pounds of seed cotton hi the 

 mass. This had been stored m a room 15 by 30 feet. It had been 

 forked over from the center and the sides and from end to end of the 

 room three times and the whole mass had been moved once from one 

 room to another. 



LCir. 123] 



