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The Demand for Uniformity .^—The demand for improvement is associated

with the insistence that uniformity, regularity and fixity of type are the most

important of all qualities both to growers and spinners.

"In all the qualities a spinner wants in cotton—namely, fineness and strength and

length and adhesiveness, and colour and freedom from waste—^in each and every case uniformity is essential, if the quahty is to be worth money. To be partly fine is to be

coarse, to be partly strong is to be weak ; to be irregular in length or colour or anything

else is to be so far poorer and less valuable. Also irregularity in plant habit is a certain bar to big production. Now I beUeve that this virtue of uniformity, this sine qua rum, mthout which no goodness is good, I beUev© that this is now for the first time in the

history of cotton within reach of attainment. Uniformity can only be hoped for from

plants that will breed pure. A pure plant may conceivably fail in uniformity, but without

purity uniformity is inconceivable. Now it is well known to all students of cotton-growing from the work of Mr. Lawrence Balls in Egypt, and of others elsewhere, that it is possible

to cultivate cotton on a commercial scale from pure parents . . . , I commend to all who

are practically engaged in cotton breeding or cotton growing that purity should be their

principal objective. Hitherto the whole character of the plant has been a chance entangle- ment of qualities, and improvement a nearly insoluble problem. When pure strains become

generally available the processes of improvement in quality or in quantity, or of gradual

modification in any desired direction, will become possible, and growers and spinners

will both be benefited." (Ibid.)

The above considered statement of a leading fine-cotton spinner defines a

problem with direct local application, not only to our cotton crop, but to every

staple in actual cultivation or of possible introduction. Reports on samples of

Sudan wheat bring to Ught the fact that every parcel included more than one

variety of wheat with a consequent reduction in the market value. An attempt

to isolate types revealed the same " entanglement of qualities " which charac-

terises existing cotton crops. Improvement in the value, as distinct from the

productivity, of our crops, can be secured neither by manuring, improved tillage,

nor the field selection and cultivation of chance variations, or " sports," but

only by the systematic application of approved scientific methods to what is

necessarily a very difiicult problem. An example of the futility of haphazard

choice of natural hybrids occurring in the field, has been afforded locally by the

so-called " Makhsus " cotton, boomed some years ago in the Sudan. This field

hybrid, which was somewhat extensively planted on its reputation for produc-

tivity, has since been abandoned after exhibiting all the irregularity and lack of

uniformity which characterise uncontrolled hybridisation. The breeding-plot,

the seed-plot and continuous and exhaustive field and laboratory observations

afford the only means of combating the natural tendencies of all cottons to

deteriorate. The good quahties of a cotton are either given to it by human

agency, or, if occurring naturally, have to be isolated and fixed as a uniform

character by the human agent.