178 THE DEVELOPMENT OF RAW COTTON 



Until the author had familiarized Egyptian workers in 

 agriculture with his " boiling curves," even the best- 

 informed of them were under the impression that the 

 three " pickings " of cotton-fields corresponded to three 

 separate orgasms of energy on the part of the plant; 

 in point of fact there is some accidental justification for 

 the origin of this belief, but the belief long outlived the 

 circumstances which gave rise to it. 



This idea of converting our fragmentary knowledge into 

 a continous sequence was in the author's mind at the very 

 beginning of his Egyptian work, but not definitely formu- 

 lated in working methods, excepting for a conviction 

 that , because much work on the cotton crop in bulk had 

 failed to yield many general] zations, it would be worth 

 while to work in the opposite way, by studying a few plants 

 carefully, and from this as methods developed to make 

 possible the study of many plants carefully the drift 

 towards continuity became apparent. 



The practical objection to developing continuous 

 records is that, unless assistance in some form is available, 

 there can be no day of rest for the observer, for a single 

 day or period omitted from the records spoils two 

 intervals, the one before and the one after. 



The collection of bolls on successive days is not entirely 

 satisfactory, since there is a slight subjectivity involved 

 in deciding whether a boll is fully open or not ; ana unless 

 the same observer can always collect the material each 

 day, this may lead to slight irregularities, though only of 

 a single day in either direction, the fully open bolls being 



