

66 THE DEVELOPMENT OF RAW COTTON 



existence when the seed is sown, and the lint thickens its 

 walls for reasons which, as Mr. Flatters pointed out, have 

 usually been ascribed to the direct benefit of Lanca- 

 shire ! 



We have already mentioned the confusing effects which 

 his stoppage of external growth has had upon the 

 previous accounts of boll development, and it remains to 

 point out that the phenomenon is not new or strange. 

 It is, on the contrary, the usual procedure of plants first 

 to enlarge the cell or organ, and then to differentiate 

 inside the skeleton of delicate cell wall or tissues thus 

 formed. That it should have taken so many years to be 

 noticed in the case of the cotton-boll is almost incom- 

 prehensible. 



We will now examine some of the details of this 

 development, taking the boll itself first, then the seed 

 with its components of seed-coat, endosperm, and embryo, 

 and lastly the lint. 



It should be remembered throughout that the figures 

 and dates assigned are averages. In the case of any given 

 boll they may be distorted to a definite amount, but 

 under the conditions attained in ordinary good irrigated 

 cultivation this distortion will not be more than about 

 4 per cent, either way in about half the number of 

 bolls observed, while a distortion of 15 per cent, will be 

 practically impossible. 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE BOLL (Fig. 13). The full-gtown H 

 boll of No. 77 strain is 26 millimetres in diameter and^ 

 40 millimetres long, with its maximum diameter at 

 two -thirds of the distance from the tip. About one 



