558 HORTICULTURE, FORESTRY, FLORICULTURE 



If the farmer doubts his own ability to acquire the necessary 

 skill or is unwilling to take time to train himself, he may find that 

 the wife or the children can give him valuable assistance. Women 

 are often more expert than men in the matching of colors and quali- 

 ties of fabrics, and children often have more acute powers of percep- 

 tion. European growers of seeds of high-grade varieties of flowers 

 and vegetables claim that women and children are more skillful than 

 men in cases that require extremely fine discrimination. If the 

 necessary talents of good eyesight and keen discrimination should 

 prove to be rare, there would be the greater reason for calling atten- 

 tion to the need of having them utilized by their fortunate possessors. 

 (B. P. LB. 66.) 



RAISING SELECTED SEED FOR SALE. 



Farmers who acquire the necessary skill in selection and are 

 consequently able to raise a uniform crop will often secure an addi- 

 tional advantage by selling seed to their neighbors. Many intelli- 

 gent farmers who wish to obtain an improved variety of cotton will 

 prefer to buy seed enough to plant a large field or to stock the whole 

 farm at once and thus save themselves the extra trouble and loss of time 

 required in beginning with a peck or a bushel. The same pains, or 

 even greater, have to be taken to keep a small quantity of cotton 

 from becoming mixed, either in the fields or at the gin, than for a large 

 quantity. To bring a large quantity of a new and untried variety 

 from a distance might be quite unwise and is a very different matter 

 from adopting a variety that is behaving in a uniform manner in the 

 same locality. 



Local communities will profit in several ways by the presence of 

 careful growers of selected seed. The seed that has been raised and 

 selected in the same community is likely to give better results than 

 any stock of the same variety that could be brought in from distant 

 localities. Farmers who expect to sell their seed in their own com- 

 munity are likely to be much more careful to maintain the uniform- 

 ity of the stock than those who expect to ship their seed to nonresi- 

 dent seed dealers. 



A variety that can be obtained in quantity from a local grower 

 is also more likely to be adopted by a whole community, which is 

 another distinct advantage. The product of the community as a 

 whole becomes more uniform and secures a better standing in the 

 market. With one variety grown and carefully selected by a whole 

 community, the difficulties of protecting the cotton from admixture 

 at the gin or from cross-fertilization by bees in the field are greatly 

 diminished. 



The farmer who has learned how to maintain uniformity in his 

 seed plat effectively, has only to extend his method over his whole 

 farm if he wishes to produce high-grade seed. No matter how uni- 

 form the variety may have been in the seed plat or in the fields in 

 the preceding year, attention should still be given to the removal 

 of any degenerate plants that appear. A new or unfavorable piece 

 of ground or a bad season may bring out an unusually large number 

 of degenerate individuals, and if these are allowed to remain in the 



