484 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1960 



State experiment stations, viewing the progress that Webb and his 

 associates had by that time made, concluded that the new teclmiques 

 and methods were then suiBciently developed to permit a thorough- 

 going and comprehensive study of the principal varieties of cotton 

 in production from the Atlantic across the country to the Pacific. 



Thus was conceived and planned the Eegional Variety Study of 

 1935-6-7, a huge program of coordinated agronomic and teclinologi- 

 cal effort which was to lay a foundation of data theretofore unavail- 

 able, on which varietal improvement and simplification, district by 

 district, would be predicated for many years to come. Sixteen vari- 

 eties of c<>tton, selected for their purity and importance in production, 

 were grown experimentally in each of the 3 years at each of 14 loca- 

 tions in the rain-watered portion of the cotton belt, each variety be- 

 ing represented by 8 replications at each station. In 1937 an addi- 

 tional station in Texas was included, and seven selected varieties were 

 grown at four stations in the irrigated valleys of the Southwest. A 

 total of some 6,000 experimental lots of ginned lint resulted. The 

 growing, harvesting, and ginning of these cottons, and their agronomic 

 evaluations, were the work of Federal and State specialists under the 

 direction of Dr. Henry W. Barre, then Head of the Division of Cotton 

 and Other Fiber Crops and Diseases in the old Bureau of Plant Indus- 

 try. It was the part of Webb and his people to make the laboratory 

 determinations of fiber length and length uniformity, fineness, 

 strength, maturity, nep content, and the X-ray patterns of crystalline 

 cellulose structure. The total material assembled considerably ex- 

 ceeded the laboratory capacity then existing, but complete fiber and 

 spinning tests were made of samples representing the 16 varieties 

 grown in 2 replications in the 3 crop years at 8 locations selected from 

 the national range, with the inclusion of some samples taken from 

 other stations. So was accumulated a massive and invaluable body of 

 precise data, the interrelations of which have been the subject of con- 

 tinuing analysis for a quarter of a century, and which constituted the 

 statistical staging ground from which have come the phenomenal im- 

 provements in the quality of the American cotton crop within that 

 period. For historical purposes, moreover, these data will long be of 

 interest as the first dependable bench mark of their kind from which 

 progress in the future can be measured. 



Soon followed another achievement by Webb, aided by his long- 

 time professional associate, Howard Richardson, which doubtless 

 more than any other served to put fiber science on a firm foundation in 

 the United States if not indeed over the world. This was the discov- 

 ery in the late 1930's of a high positive relationship between strength 

 in raw cotton fibers and strength in yarns. Earlier investigators had 

 failed repeatedly in their efforts to find and evaluate such a relation- 



