18 BULLETIN 1030, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 
PROBLEM OF SEED SUPPLY OF MEADE COTTON. 
The successful substitution of Meade cotton for Sea Island will 
depend largely upon the extent of cooperation developed between 
the farmers and ginners to establish and maintain a supply of pure 
seed. The purity of a stock can not be maintained if more than one 
variety is grown in the same or in an adjacent field, for hybridization 
by insects that visit the flowers is sure to follow. The failure of the 
Sea Island growers to appreciate the importance of complete isola- 
tion and clean ginning for their cotton has been responsible for the 
popular idea that varieties are bound to run out and that new seed 
must be secured every few years. They have failed to appreciate 
the fact that the growers of fine Sea Island cotton on the islands off 
the coast of South Carolina, from whom their new supplies of seed 
were obtained, maintained the purity of their stocks by growing only 
one variety, selecting their seed for planting each year and ginning 
their crop on their own private gins. The present flourishing Egyp- 
tian cotton industry 7 in Arizona owes its success to an early apprecia- 
tion of the fact that the purity and high quality of the product could 
not be maintained if more than one variety of cotton were grown in 
the same community. 
The demand for seed of Meade cotton is becoming increasingly 
large, and efforts are being made to develop an adequate supply of 
pure seed as soon as possible. Progress has been slower than was 
anticipated, however, because of the lack of cooperation between the 
growers and ginners, resulting from the failure of the farmers to 
appreciate the necessity for clean ginning and of the ginners to 
appreciate their responsibility to the community in assisting in the 
maintenance of pure stocks of seed. 
With the decrease of Sea Island cotton production these ginning 
difficulties are likely to be less serious, but there will still remain the 
necessity for the constant selection and complete isolation of Meade 
cotton from which seed for planting is to be obtained. Hybrids 
between the Sea Island and Meade cottons are easily detected and 
can be rogued out in the early part of the season, but crosses between 
the Meade and short cotton can be distinguished only with great 
difficulty before the fiber and seed can be examined, and then the 
damage by cross-pollination has already been clone. 
SELECTION NECESSARY TO MAINTAIN UNIFORMITY. 
No matter how well selected the Meade stock may be, continuous 
selection will be necessary to maintain uniformity in the fiber. In 
the most carefully selected stocks inferior plants will appear; and 
if these are permitted to remain in the field, insects that visit the 
flowers carry the pollen from the bad plants to the good ones, and 
the seed produced by such plants is generally of inferior quality. 
