MARKETING COTTON SEED FOR PLANTING PURPOSES. 21 
shipping tag or on the bag, with the aid of properly kept records, 
will aid in tracing the lot of seed from which the shipment in ques- 
tion was taken, through each step of its preparation for the market 
back to its source of production. The original cause of the dissatis- 
faction would thus be located and responsibility properly placed. 
Information regarding the name and address of grower, location of 
farm, variety grown, and origin of stock seed as well as data on ger- 
mination referred to on page 20 also should be recorded in connection 
with each lot number. 
SELLING. 
The indiscriminate buying and selling of field-crop seeds with 
little or no regard for the purity of variety or genuineness of strain 
is one of the greatest evils in the seed trade. A sale of cotton seed 
for planting purposes represents something more than ordinary mer- 
chandising. It has a- direct bearing on the crop that may be produced. 
The value of the seed is potential, not apparent, and the farmer in 
making purchases has to rely almost wholly on the integrity of the 
seller and the accuracy and completeness of his statements. 
EXTRAVAGANT CLAIMS UNDESIRABLE. 
A glance at the advertisements, catalogues, circulars, and other 
printed matter issued by various cotton-seed dealers will disclose 
many extravagant claims and inconsistent statements. In some cases 
these claims are gross misrepresentations, and are never sustained 
except under the most favorable conditions or by the sacrifice of 
other equally important characteristics. The outstanding inconsist- 
ency in such statements is the fact that in many cases they attempt 
to describe the good points of a variety and to show its agricultural 
possibilities when an examination of the seed for sale would show it 
to be mixed, poorly ginned, and often low in germination. Farmers 
generally are familiar with the description and characteristics of the 
most widely grown varieties of cotton, and it is of far greater im- 
portance for dealers to give assurance that the seed offered for sale is 
pure as to variety, in good physical condition, and of high germina- 
tion. The policy of simply listing cotton seed by its true variety 
name and stating in detail the conditions under which a particular 
lot was produced, special methods employed in preparing it for plant- 
ing purposes and for market, and the percentage that may be ex- 
pected to grow would indicate more clearly its actual commercial and 
agricultural value. The farmer, the ultimate purchaser and con- 
sumer, being already familiar with the possible results to be obtained 
from planting a particular variety of cotton, should be more inter- 
ested in knowing whether the lot of seed purchased is pure, unmixed, 
well ginned or delinted, recleaned and graded, and of high viability. 
Cotton seed with each individual seed a potential plant, not descrip- 
tive variety information, is the commodity to be sold or to be 
purchased. 
