20 BULLETIN 1030, IT. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 
rior pollen. After the bolls begin to reach mature size it is well to go through 
the plat again and pull out all plants that show by the small size or other pe- 
culiarities of the bolls that there has been a variation from the standards of 
the variety. These preliminary selections greatly simplify the final selection in 
the fall, when attention can be limited to the yield and to the characters of the 
lint and seeds (2,3). (Pis. X and XL) 
USE OF PROGENY EOWS IN SELECTION. 
Selection can be made still more efficient by the use of progeny rows. The 
seed of select individual plants is picked separately into paper bags and planted 
the next season in adjacent rows, in order to test the behavior of the progenies 
of the different individuals. An inferior progeny can be rejected as a whole 
and selection limited to the best rows. It often happens that a very good plant 
produces a comparatively inferior progeny, which would not be excluded from 
the stock unless the progeny-row test were made. 
Nevertheless, the use of progeny rows is no substitute for skill and care in 
making the selection, for if the selected plants are not all of the true type of 
the variety, admixture by cross-pollination will occur in the progeny rows the 
same as in a mixed planting. Protection against the danger of crossing be- 
tween different progenies can be secured by holding over a part of the seed of 
the select individuals used to plant the progeny rows. The remainder of the 
seed that produced the best progeny row can be planted in an isolated breed- 
ing plat in the year following the progeny test. In this way a special strain is 
developed from a single superior plant. 
SPINNING TESTS OF MEADE COTTON. 
That interest in the new Meade variety was being manifested by 
New England manufacturers was shown by the purchase of several 
bales of this fiber in 1918 for the purpose of conducting comparative 
spinning tests with the Sea Island and Egyptian cottons. The results 
of one of these tests comparing the Meade and the Egyptian Sakellari- 
dis cottons are shown in Table 3. 
Commenting on the general merits of the variety, the officers of 
the company making the tests reported in Table 3 state : 
The Meade cotton ran equally as well in all processes, and the only material 
difference was the lessening of twist in the speed frames to an extent of 20 
per cent. We consider the Meade to be a very desirable cotton and would 
suggest the encouragement of its growth on as large a scale as possible. 
Comparative tests of Sea Island and Meade cotton conducted by 
the Bureau of Markets were summarized in the annual report of that 
bureau for the fiscal year ended June 30, 1920 (13, p. 20-21). 
These spinning tests were conducted at the New Bedford Textile 
School and consisted in spinning the various cottons into different 
numbers of yarns to determine the comparative waste content of the 
cotton and the tensile strength of the yarn. The tensile-strength 
tests were made in the cotton-testing laboratory in Washington, 
D. C, under 65 per cent relative humidity. 
