SORGHUM EXPERIMENTS OX THE GREAT PLAINS. 55 
stands resulted from the care in seeding, and loss from shattering 
was avoided by harvesting the crop as soon as it was ripe. A good 
stand of feterita is rarely obtained under ordinary farm conditions, 
and the yields are reduced by allowing the crop to stand in the field 
after it is ripe. This perhaps accounts in a measure for the decrease 
which has taken place in the relative acreage of feterita throughout 
the sorghum belt. In Kansas in 1915 feterita occupied 265,322 
acres, or about 17 per cent of the total grain-sorghum acreage of 
that State; in 1919 there were only 77,134 acres of feterita, or 7 per 
cent of the total. The present acreage of feterita in Texas has been 
estimated at 10 per cent, and in Oklahoma, Xew Mexico, and Cali- 
fornia at 5 per cent or less of the grain-sorghum acreage in these 
States. This decrease in acreage may be only partly due to the 
aforementioned weaknesses of feterita. It is of most value in dry years, 
and the past eight years have been rather favorable for the sorghums. 
Fig. 19.— Freed sorghum at Hays, Kans., in 1916, showing its extreme earliness and value in regions 
subject to drought. Photographed August 14. The sorghum on the right was seeded on May 
3 and is ready to harvest; that on the left was seeded July 1 and had neither rain nor cultivation 
after seeding, yet headed quite well. 
Spur feterita, an improved forage variety originated by the Texas 
Agricultural Experiment Station at Spur, Tex., has more leaves and 
a stouter stem than the ordinary feterita and matures about one 
week later (4). Spur feterita has done well at Hays, Kans., and 
Chillicothe, Tex. (see fig. 12), and would probably replace the ordi- 
nary variety of feterita to a large extent if it were not for the fact 
that feterita is grown principally because of its earliness. 
Several varieties, which are not easily grouped because of their 
hvbrid origin, deserve passing mention. Freed sorghum is a small 
and extremely early variety with white seeds, which if they threshed 
free from the glumes would no doubt equal kafir seed in feeding value. 
Seeded on July 1 Freed headed fully in 45 days at Hays, Kans., in 
1916. without either rain or tillage^ during this period. (Fig. 19.) 
