162 
COTTON 
less effort and labor later on will be required to com- 
plete the work. Then culture is given also to break 
the surface crust that forms after each rain, so as 
to conserve moisture and blanket the ground with 
a mulch of fine dry soil. If rains come often, we 
need to cultivate often; if weeds and grass persist 
in presenting themselves, then we must keep the 
cultivator going, in order to disappoint them and 
prove ourselves masters of the situation. Then 
too, if dry weather becomes the rule, the cultivator 
must be kept at work so as to hold the water in the 
soil as far as possible for growing plants. 
The best tool for this purpose, as has already 
been suggested, is a light cultivator with several 
shovels. If you will use this tool once every week 
or ten days, going once or twice in every row, you 
will have little difficulty in keeping cotton free from 
weeds and grass and in providing suitable cultiva- 
tion for these other purposes. 
TOPPING THE PLANTS 
A practice more widely followed in former years 
than now is "topping cotton." This operation 
consists in the removal of a few inches of the ex- 
treme top of the cotton stalk late in summer. The 
idea is to check the growth of the leafy upper part 
of the plant, and thereby favor the fuller develop- 
ment of the bolls already formed. 
Tests as to the advantages of topping have been 
made at a number of places, including several at 
our Experiment Stations, but fail to indicate any 
benefit from the practice; in fact, some of these 
tests have been quite unfavorable to it. In the face 
of these results and in view of the labor required, 
