COTTON 
45 
the road. We know another farmer who by a few 
years' seed selection has increased the yield of cot- 
ton thus improved from 400 to 600 pounds while 
seed selected in the old way grown on similar land 
and under similar conditions still makes its bare 400 
pounds an acre. Fifty per cent, increase from 
four years' selection of seed! 
Of course, where a special type of cotton has been 
nurtured and improved through a long period of 
years' seed selection has increased the yield of cot- 
results can be obtained than with ordinary farm- 
bred seed; and when our farmers come to a proper 
appreciation of this fact, a long step toward the 
doubled yield will have been made by this one re- 
form. Thus one of our State Departments of 
Agriculture, speaking of a five-year test of cotton 
varieties ( with practically the same conditions of soil, 
fertilization and cultivation) , declares that in 1900, 
in a test of eight varieties the difference between 
the variety yielding the largest amount of seed cot- 
ton per acre, and the one the smallest, was 565 
pounds; in 1901 and 1902 in tests of seven varieties 
each, the differences were 520 and 790 pounds re- 
spectively; in 1903, 662 1-2 pounds when nine 
varieties were incorporated; and 725 2-5 pounds 
difference in 1904 in a test of twenty-one varieties. 
In other words, one man uses intelligence in seed 
selection; another man does not; both work equally 
hard; both have land of equal value; both expend 
the same amount for fertilizers — but the scientific 
cotton farmer gets from 500 to 700 pounds more 
per acre than the thoughtless clodhopper. 
So much for what we may accomplish by seed 
selection alone. 
