36 CROP GROWING AND CROP FEEDING 



crop. A cotton plant that habitually grows long-jointed and single-boiled 

 can never be as productive as one that is more compact in habit and makes 

 twin bolls. Long staple is a good feature, but if mere length of staple is 

 the only feature looked after it may be accompanied by other less desirable 

 characters. Hence, in the improvement of cotton, it is desirable to get to- 

 gether the plants that have certain desirable features, though they may not all 

 be combined in one plant. But by planting together the ones that have at least 

 one feature we are after, and taking them away from the influence of plants 

 like the lintless ones, we may by degrees get the desirable features combined 

 in one variety, if we annually work towards an ideal. Mr. Cole was very 

 fortunate in making such an advance in a single season, but if the same 

 selection is not followed up the variable character of the plant will soon run 

 the cotton back to its former mixed character. The permanent improvement 

 of no plant that is annually reproduced from seed can be effected in a single 

 season. We must patiently, year after year, select towards the ideal we have 

 in mind, until we have established hereditary tendencies to come like the seed 

 plant. Only after years of careful selection can we claim to have an im- 

 proved variety. And here is right where there has been more failures than 

 in anything else connected with the cotton crop. One grower, like Mr. Cole, 

 finds plants of extra quality and saves the seed. The result is an improve- 

 ment. But the plants selected from were surrounded by others of inferior 

 character, and, as Mr. Mitchell says, the bees are always bringing pollen to 

 the blooms, for there is a great deal of nectar in a cotton flower, and the 

 result is that the variety is not uniformly the same, nor permanent. The 

 plants for seed should annually be planted in a section by themselves, and all 

 inferior plants that vary from the type sought should be rigorously rogued 

 out. No matter if your entire crop was planted that season from selected 

 seed of the year before, save no seed but from the seed patch where the watch 

 has been kept on it, and finally you will get a real race, or strain, of improved 

 cotton that will be permanent. I have treated thus fully on the fruit 

 and the seed, since upon these depend all the improvement we are to make 

 in our cultivated plants that are to produce the crops we sell and use. And 

 there is no one point in farm economy more neglected than the breeding of 

 the plants we cultivate. Seedsmen fully understand the great value of pedi- 

 gree in their seed stocks, and pedigree in a plant also that in an animal, comes 

 through thoughtful and persistent breeding towards an ideal plant or animal. 

 We have treated of the selection of seed in the corn and cotton plants as types 

 of two great crops that are of interest to two large classes of growers. But 

 the improvement through selection is not confined to cotton and corn. There 

 is not a crop grown on the farm that will not yield improved results to the 



