SOUTHERN HORIZONS 



This cautious Texan a contradiction rivaling the cot- 

 tonless cotton plant suspects that there may be some 

 mysterious correlation between sparsity of fiber and 

 superfluity of seed, but as he prudently puts it, "at least 

 the cotton plant is willing to cooperate, and that's essen- 

 tial." 



In one way these six picked plants are very incon- 

 siderate of the problem they are being asked to help 

 solve. They have a bad trick of scattering their seed. 

 When the bolls burst open, the seeds, with so little 

 lint to hold them, are catapulted broadcast. Killough 

 believes this can be corrected, since some plants are 

 less addicted than others to this spendthrift habit. Fur- 

 ther progress will require more of the same scrupulous 

 methods of selection and then propagation. 



After four years of that eyestraining, backbreaking 

 selection, Killough collected a bushel or more of seed 

 of each of these six varieties. In the spring of 1945 he 

 was able to plant real field tests with the prospect of 

 harvesting sufficient seed cotton for practical commer- 

 cial trials. Next winter he expects to begin to know a 

 little about what might be expected of his semilint 

 cotton. 



Some of his neighbors are not so circumspect. They 

 are sure that cottonless cotton is not a white blackbird, 

 and they see cotton grown for seed as the salvation of 

 the Texas planters. They have always grown the lower 

 grades, with a comparatively low yield per acre, on a 



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