8 
H. G. flastiitgs & Co., Seedsmen, Atlanta, Georgia. 
What Two Photographs Show 
Th e Plants that Steal the Cotton Grower’s Money 
Inevery crop of cotton In the South there are always some plants making cotton at the rate of a bale per acre or more. If some plants in every 
crop doit, why not all plants in the croiJ? \\ hy does one plant have 20 or 30 or even 50 bolls on it and another under exactly the same conditions 
have only 2 or 4 or 6? This is a most serious question for you and for us. If there are always some plants in every crop making at the hale per acre 
rate, wh y is it that the average production is less than one-third of a, bale per acre? Every cotton grower in the South is interested in the answer. 
It's a matter for both you and ourselves to consider fully, to get a clear and truthful answer to. 
We tind much of interest and value in our test and cottoii-breediug work on the iiastings’ H arms, and we can answer the question. 
THE ANSWER TO 1 . it QUESTION ABOVE. FROM PHOTOGRAPHS OK 2 PLANTS OF THE SAME VARIETY 
IN OUR TEST GROUNDS. COST JUST AS MUCH TO GROW ONE PLANT AS IT DID THE OTHER 
We had these photographs taken on purpose to reproduce in our cata¬ 
logue. It illustrates fully the imjiortance of ''seed-breeding,” not only the 
importance, but the necessity for it. We have no message for the cotton 
grower who is content to make or )/, bale of cotton peracre. Our message 
is for the man who wants to stay in tfie bale or more per acre class. 
We are regularly buying and testing all of the varieties of cotton we 
hear of, growing them to see how good the variety is and whether the 
seed has been worked to a point where it is valuable. We do not mention 
the name of the variety shown above but would say that we paid a good 
price for this seed, that it was extensively advertised and sohl by a cotton 
grower in 1910 as the best cotton that could be planted and is again being 
advertised this year. This cotton, while considerably better than the 
average, shows the lack of regularity,of'‘breeding-up.” There were some 
good plants in this lot but most of them were ten bolls or less per plant. 
The real point to the cotton grower is this: It took exactly as much in 
cost in the way of use of land, plowing, cultivating and fertilizer to grow 
a plant bearing2 bolls as it did the one growing nearly 60. There is hardly 
a cotton field in the South that won’t show some such variation in the 
yields of the difl'erent plants in the field. We have all been growing too 
many of these 2, 3, 4 or 5 boll plants of cotton and not enough 20, 30 or 4u 
boll plants. Years ago we knew there was something wrong about the 
cotton grow'ing but our idea was that the trouble W'hs the poor cultiva¬ 
tion and light fertilizing. We then looked on cotton as a whole field of 
cotton and it wasn't until we got right down to making a close study of 
cottou as separate individual plants that we found that there was aliout 
as much ditl'erence between difi'erent plants of the same variety as there 
is between a prosperous, well :o do farmer and a boarder at tlie County 
Pauper Farm, if yo\i do\ibt us on this point study the plants in your own 
crop next summer and fall. We believe in the best of cultivation and 
fertilizing but if there are not prolific qualities actually in the seed yon 
plant you can’tmake bolls on the plant. Plant No. 2 had exactly the same 
chance as No. 1. You see the difference. It’s those barren or nearly bar¬ 
ren plants that make so much of the cotton growing unprofitable; that 
has done more than anything else to put the whole South on an average 
basis of less than 200 pounds of lint per acre. That's just where our 
“cotton-breeding” comes in. 
