Keeping records.—It is very important, if the breeder is to know what advance is being made, that records be pre served showing the weight of seed cotton and the lint pro duced by each select plant. With these weights, the per centage of lint can be deter mined readily, and all of the important factors which go to produce a heavy yield thus be re corded. The preservation of such notes regarding the select plants will enable a comparison to be made of plants selected in various years, and will greatly enhance the value and interest of the work.
Planting the sclections.—The next year a field should be chosen for the breeding patch which has good soil, typical of the plantation and region so far as possible. It is important that the soil throughout the patch be of uniform quality and kind, and not patchy. Do not choose the richest and best land available, as this may be different frum the laud on which the improved variety is later to be grown. The breeding patch, if possible, should be isolated from any other cotton-field a distance of 500 to 1,000 feet at least. This is to avoid crossing or mixing with different varieties and unelected stock. Such isolation is very im portant, if we are to avoid deterioration. A good place to put the isolated patch is in the middle of a corn-field, where it is surrounded for some dis tance on each side by corn. If an isolated patch cannot be provided, the breeding patch as a second choice may be in one corner of a cotton-field planted with seed of the same variety from which the selections were made the preceding year. Under no conditions place the breeding patch in close proximity to cotton of other varieties or kind. The writer would urge that an isolated patch be provided in all cases, as this insures that all ferti lization will be by pollen from plants coming from select mothers. The seed from each individual should be planted in a single row by itself, a plant to a row, by what may be termed the "plant-to row" method. As each row is planted, a stake with the number on it of the plant from which the seed was taken should be placed at the end. Owing to the small quantity of the seed from each selection, it is best to plant it in hills about eigh teen or twenty inches apart in the rows, dropping five to eight seeds in a hill. In the thinning or chopping, the laborers should be instructed care fully to cut out all but the strongest and most vigorous plant of each hill. Give the breeding
patch the same manuring and cultivation as is given an ordinary crop, but remember that in all cases this should be sufficient and thorough to in sure the best results.
Examination and selection of progenies. —When the cotton in the breeding patch is well open and it is important that the first picking should be made, go over the patch very carefully and study the progenies from the different select plants. It is important to determine which of the plants selected the first year has transmitted to its prog eny, in the greatest degree, the good qualities of high yield, good lint and other features, for which it was selected. This is probably the most important point to be determined in all breeding work, as a select plant to be good must have the property of transmitting its desirable qualities to its progeny. A careful comparison of the one hundred or more progenies will usually result in the breeder finding a few progenies or rows which, as a whole, are considerably superior to the others. When these have been found, they should be marked, and the individual selections for continuing the breeding should be taken from these rows.
Making the second-generation selections.— After the best progenies in the breeding patch have been selected, the breeder should then carefully go over these progenies, plant by plant, and select and mark those plants which are found to be the most productive, and come up to the stan dard set for length of lint, abundance of lint to seed, type of plant, and the like. The plants selected should be numbered as in the year pre ceding. A good system of numbering these se lected plants, which will show their pedigree at a glance, is as follows : For example, if one of the best progenies is from the original selection No. 2, label the selections in this row 2-1, 2-2, 2-3, 2-4, 2-5, and so on, the second number after the dash being the number of the individual selected in this generation, while the first number, 2, is the number of the original selection. In the same way, if progeny 51 is one of the best, the selections made from this would be numbered 51-1, 51-2, 51-3, and so on. When the third-generation selections are made, they should be numbered in the same way, separating the generation by a dash. For example, the selections made from progeny of 51 1 would be labeled 51-1-1, 51-1-2, 51-1-3.