COTTON 
99 
The animal breeder calls this quality pre- 
potency. It represents the faculty of transmission 
of parental qualities to offspring. Some animals 
do this to a remarkable degree. Some plants do. 
Study your individual cotton plants so that you 
may know which plants are pre-potent and which 
ones are not. Where this transmitting power is 
weak, you will have less desirable breeding stock, 
and this you should discard. Preserve seed from 
plants only that are able to propagate their in- 
dividual qualities and merits; otherwise your prog- 
ress will be slow. 
Now as to the best way of putting this principle 
into effect: suppose you have selected one hun- 
dred bolls and these have come from several plants. 
You can label the seed at planting time, from every 
boll, or at least those from particular plants, and 
determine the transmitting power. This makes 
more work, but it greatly facilitates the breeding 
operations. 
SELECTION IS NOT SLOW 
Nor is the selection of seed a slow process for 
increasing yield of lint and seed. Its practice will 
show results even the first year. A good farmer 
of our acquaintance last year grew cotton at the 
rate of one thousand pounds of seed per acre from 
seed of three years' selection, while the ordinary 
seed under the same conditions as to soil, fertilizers 
etc., produced only 700 pounds per acre. Similar- 
ly, in your field in any growing season there are 
doubtless plants which will yield at the rate of five 
hundred pounds of seed cotton per acre; others, a 
thousand pounds; still others will produce at the 
rate of fifteen hundred or 2500 pounds of seed 
cotton per acre. 
