BULLETIN 1365, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 
seemingly dormant _ state, but eventually withered and shed. As 
this peculiar behavior of the squares on the outer or last node of 
Acala fruiting branches was observed only a few times in 1924, no 
attempt was made to differentiate between these and normal squares, 
and all were included in Table 3 . In this table many of the squares 
that appear to have shed near flowering time may be regarded as 
those that entered a dormant state before shedding, but some un- 
doubtedly shed normally or were caused to fall by injuries. In 1925, 
however, so many of the squares on the last node of the fruiting 
branches exhibited a tendency to remain dormant before shedding 
that in compiling Table 3 no square was included which was borne 
on the last node of any fruiting branch of two or more nodes and 
which shed later than 30 days after it appeared. Eighty-seven such 
exceptions were found on the main stalks and 55 on the vegetative 
limbs of Acala. Their age at shedding varied from 31 to 69 days, 
which in the latter case is well over twice as long as an Acala square 
requires to reach the flower. 
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Fig. 1. — Number of squares shed at different ages from 20 Pima cotton plants and from 20 main 
stalks and complete plants of Acala cotton in 1924 
Although some cases of dormant squares may occur in Pima, none 
was noted on the plants studied in either 1924 or 1925. The Pima 
squares that appear in Table 3 to have fallen just prior to flowering 
may have received injuries or may have been slightly affected by 
retarded growth or a short dormant period which escaped notice. 
That few if any squares on the outer node of the fruiting branches 
of either Pima or Acala lay dormant for more than a very short period 
and then flowered is apparent from Table 4, which shows the length 
of time for squares on specific nodes of the fruiting branches to reach 
flowering in 1924 and 1925. The number of days required for the 
squares to develop into flowers on the outer nodes does not show that 
the period of development of such squares had been greatly lengthened 
although some lengthening occurred, and it will be discussed in 
connection with the table. 
In 1924 the age at which a square was likely to shed appears to 
have been more definite in the Pima variety than in the Acala, as 
may be observed from Figure 1, which shows graphically the data 
presented in Table 3 . The ma j ority of Pima squares which shed varied 
in age from 8 to 18 days, whereas the majority of those from Acala varied 
