COTTON 99 



The animal breeder calls this quality pre- 

 potency. It represents the faculty of transmission 

 of parental qualities to offspring. Some animals 

 do this to a remarkable degree. Some plants do. 



Study your individual cotton plants so that you 

 may know which plants are pre-potent and which 

 ones are not. Where this transmitting power is 

 weak, you will have less desirable breeding stock, 

 and this you should discard. Preserve seed from 

 plants only that are able to propagate their in- 

 dividual qualities and merits ; otherwise your prog- 

 ress will be slow. 



Now as to the best way of putting this principle 

 into effect: suppose you have selected one hun- 

 dred bolls and these have come from several plants. 

 You can label the seed at planting time, from every 

 boll, or at least those from particular plants, and 

 determine the transmitting power. This makes 

 more work, but it greatly facilitates the breeding 

 operations. 



SELECTION IS NOT SLOW 



Nor is the selection of seed a slow process for 

 increasing yield of lint and seed. Its practice will 

 show results even the first year. A good farmer 

 of our acquaintance last year grew cotton at the 

 rate of one thousand pounds of seed per acre from 

 seed of three years' selection, while the ordinary 

 seed under the same conditions as to soil, fertilizers 

 etc., produced only 700 pounds per acre. Similar- 

 ly, in your field in any growing season there are 

 doubtless plants which will yield at the rate of five 

 hundred pounds of seed cotton per acre; others, a 

 thousand pounds; still others will produce at the 

 rate of fifteen hundred or 2500 pounds of seed 

 cotton per acre. 



