34 CROP GROWING AND CROP FEEDING 



anyone who attempts the improvement of any of our crop plants must study 

 the character of the whole plant, and not attempt to breed for characters that 

 are antagonistic to each other. Our southern farmers readily recognize the 

 fact that there are good and poor varieties of corn, wheat and other crops, 

 but the great majority of the growers seem to think that cotton seed is simply 

 cotton seed, and take very little thought about it so long as it will germinate 

 and grow. The result is that only here and there have there been men who 

 have given any attention to the selection of improved varieties of the cotton 

 plant, and when these improved varieties are sent out among farmers they are 

 delighted with some of them for a while, and then, having secured the 

 improved strain, they assume that they have it for good, and go ahead as 

 they formerly did, get their seed from the general crop at the gin, and the 

 variable force so strong in the plant, soon takes it out of the strain into which 

 care has bred it; and though the grower claims that he is still growing the 

 variety, he has simply allowed it to run back to an inferior variety and finds 

 it no better than the others. It is not the fault of the improved variety, but 

 of the careless grower. So long, then, as the great mass of cotton growers 

 will take no pains in the proper selection of their seed, there is room for great 

 profit to the grower who will work in an intelligent manner to produce, for 

 his own use at least, a cotton that will prove of increased productiveness and 

 quality. Mr. H. B. Mitchell, an intelligent cotton grower in Georgia, writing 

 in regard to this matter, says that he has proved the utter fallacy of the notion 

 that any kind of cotton seed is as good as any other. "Starting out with un- 

 improved seed making one-fourth of a bale per acre, we have, with improved 

 seed and careful selection each year, produced a cotton which, under very ad- 

 verse conditions, yields a bale per acre, and from which we are satisfied the 

 limit has by no means yet been reached. To improve seed, the first of Sep- 

 tember we go over the cotton, marking such stalks as evince the highest points 

 of merit. The cotton from these stalks we pick in advance of the regular 

 cotton pickers, rejecting all damaged or immature bolls, and spreading as 

 picked, till thoroughly dry. It is next carried to gin, the gin completely 

 cleaned out, and swept around, a large sheet spread down to receive the seed, 

 which is then sacked up and so kept till hauled to the field at planting time. 

 Were it not for bees there would be no trouble in keeping the cotton pure, 

 but they bring the pollen from fields of unimproved cotton, causing a good 

 deal of mixture." 



Mr. W. E. Cole, of Cartersville, Ga., writes : "I was raised on a cotton farm 

 in the old South, and no care was taken in the saving of the seed, but it was 

 simply taken from the general seed pile at the gin in the fall. As I 

 grew older I began the study of the cotton plant more closely. I noticed 



