NEW VARIETIES. 



249 



in combating the pest, and will continue as an immense ad- 

 vantage to the planter after the boll wevil has lost its terrors. 

 But the point we wish to call attention to in this connection 

 is that in some of the fields which had been absolutely ruined 

 there was found here and there a plant which had matured 

 its lint and seemed unaffected. Upon these it was found that 

 the larva was there the same as in other cases, but that the 



CHAPTER VII., FIG. 68. HYBRID PEACH-NECTARINE, 

 ONE-HALF NATURAL SIZE. 



plant had thrown up a kind of protective tissue under the in- 

 fluence of the irritation set up by the presence of the larva 

 which had smothered it to death, after which the cotton had 

 gone on to a normal development. The work of creating a 

 variety of cotton which will do normally and regularly what 

 is now done rarely and, as it were, by chance, by two or three 

 plants in as many acres this is the game now being played 

 by some of the most skilful plant breeders of the world for 

 stakes higher by millions of dollars than have ever been 



