COTTON-SPACING EXPERIMENTS 45 
Both Cardon (/) and Meade (8), in reporting upon experiments with 
plants spaced at different distances in the row, show that the percent- 
age of lint is not reduced by close spacing. In the experiments at 
Greenville there has been no indication of a reduction in the per- 
centage of lint from closely spaced plants. On the contrary, there 
seems to be a tendency toward a higher percentage of lint from the 
rows left unthinned than from wider spacings. Boll and lint data 
compiled from 10-boll samples, taken from the 1925 comparison of 
one plant every 12 inches with unthinned rows, are shown in Table 20. 
Table 20 shows little variation in length of lint from the two spac- 
ings, but there is considerable fluctuation in the weight of the indi- 
vidual 10-boll samples and also in percentage of lint. This variation 
in boll weight and percentage of lint emphasizes the importance of 
using a considerable number of samples for laboratory examination. 
Table 20 shows that the percentage of lint from both spacings was 
higher in section 3 than in section 1. The data presented in Table 20 
are summarized in Table 21, where each number represents a mean 
of 18 cases. 
TaBLE 21.—Summary of data in Table 20, each number representing the mean of 
the 18 cases mentioned therein 
Tat . sti 6 Bolls per pound 
| Weight (in grams) of rer Length | ie 
Spacing Q ae 
eed . o ; Seed : 
cotton | Seed | Lint lint | @neh) cotton | int 
Nira GUT Cea ee DAB ere CE ee Pt 56.7 34.4 22:3 | 39.5 1; 80.4 203 
One plant every 12 inches -___________._-__--- 58. 1 35. 4 2257, |, (3950 I 78.7 201 
The size of boll is an important plant character that appears to be 
affected by leaving plants close together in the row. There is usu- 
ally a reduction in boll size in the closely spaced plants. Sometimes 
the difference is very slight and again it.is very pronounced. 
In the experiments conducted in 1923 and 1924 the unthinned 
rows required more bolls to produce a pound of seed cotton than the 
wider spacings. The mean number of bolls required to produce a 
pound of seed cotton from the different spacings in six different 
experiments in 1923 was as follows: Unthinned, 80; 6 inch, 80; 12 
inch, 71; chopped, 65; hills (1 plant), 70; hills (several stalks), 80; 
and thinned by cross cultivation, 71. 
In the 1924 experiments there was very little difference in the 
boll size from the different spacings. The mean number of bolls per 
pound of seed cotton in the experiment on fine sandy loam soil at 
Campbell, was 66.6 for the chopped rows and 69.4 for the unthinned 
rows. In the experiment made at Greenville, on the Houston clay 
soil, the mean number of bolls per pound of seed cotton was 85.4 for 
the unthinned rows and 83.7 for the thinned. In 1925 the boll 
size from the closer spacings was only slightly reduced, as shown in 
Table 20. 
A slight reduction in boll size and a small increase in percentage 
of lint appears to be associated with close spacing. The seed weight 
is usually less from the smaller bolls and is responsible for the higher 
percentage of lint. 
