54 LUTHER BURBANK 



ing to so good an authority as Professor Thomas 

 F. Hunt of the New York College of Agricul- 

 ture, probably half the cotton seed planted is 

 taken at random from the public gin. Yet the 

 importance of selection has come to be under- 

 stood in recent years by many growers, and the 

 old slipshod methods have been abandoned by 

 such cotton raisers as appreciate the advantages 

 of applying scientific methods to the betterment 

 of their crop. 



The method that has produced excellent re- 

 sults is one that has been illustrated over and over 

 in connection with one after another of my ex- 

 periments in plant development. 



It consists essentially in selecting for seed the 

 product of plants that are observed to be more 

 productive than their fellows, and which at the 

 same time produce cotton fiber of superior 

 quality. 



With cotton, as with other plants, it does not 

 at all suffice to select merely the individual bolls 

 that chance, through some nutritional advantage, 

 to grow to large size. It is necessary to consider 

 the plant itself and its total product as well as 

 the average quality of that product. We have 

 seen that, under precisely similar conditions, dif- 

 ferent individual plants of every species show a 

 more or less wide range of variation as to size and 



