The progressive farmer. [volume] (Winston, N.C.) 1886-1904, 1903-07-07
THE AGRICULTURAL YEARBOOK.

is now being distributed. Progressive FARMER
readers who desire copies should apply at once
to their Congressman.
1t seems to us that the articles that go to make
up the 1908 Yearbook are more practical and
meaty than those in any preceding volume.
Some of the more notable of these were briefly
discussed by our Washington correspondent IN
last weeks paper. The REPORT of the Secretary"
with which the book opens, has already been sum-
married. in our columns. Butter makers should
not overlook DIR. Alvord's clarifying at Home
and Abroad" while fruit growers will be interest
ed in Mr.. @. L.. Marlatt's paper on "The Son Jose
Scale" Another paper of especial Importance to
fruit growers is, Pomologist PowelPs "TOpworking
Orchard Trees" "Audubon Societies in Relation
to the Farmer" is a strong plea for bird protec-
ton, and its wide reading would doubtless encour-
age more rigid enforcement of our new bird law
in North Carolina. Chief Galloway makes an in
teresting report of Industrial Progress in Plant
Work"-an illustration of the new ideals in plant
breeding discussed in DR.. L. II. Bailey's paper in
last weeks Progressive Farmer. DIR. Galloway
describes the efforts that have been made to in
crease the oil content or nitrogen content of
corn; the development of wheat growing III arid
Western regions as a result of hardy new varieties
introduced; the beginning of the macaroni wheat
industry in the same region and the rapidly in
creasing production of rice, cowpeas, and
velvet beans in the South. Progress in cotton
Improvement also receives attention-the devel-
opment of wilt-resistant varieties which will save
the $780, 900 to 100000 annually lost by this di-
sease; the experimental culture of Egyptian varie-
ties, of which we annually import Sc, 10000
worth; crosses between Sea Island and upland
kinds in the hope of producing a long staple up
land race.
A much more exhaustive discussion of the
same subject is Mr.. Herbert J. Webber's "Im-
provement of Cotton by Seed Selection; :" it will
probably prove of greater value to the South than
any other article in the book. While every farmer
is careful to select only his largest or most pro-
ductive\ ears for seed corn, while he beds only
his finest sweet potatoes, and painstakingly selects
his tobacco seed from the best stalks in the field,
cottonseed are almost invariably chosen by the
most haphazard methods. Mr.. Weber is un-
dOubtedly right in the assertion that ".fully half
the cotton planters use seed taken at random
from public gins, about which they know nothing
other than that it was produced somewhere in the
same vicinity" We hope that every cotton grower
who reads the Yearbook will consider the record
of Improvement made by experimental tests in
seed selection and will adopt one of the two prac-
teal methods suggested by Mr.. Weber.
"Our Systems of Farm Management" de-
serves the attention of our One-crop farmers. In
fifteen States and Territories, chiefly in the
West, live stock farming prevails and live stock
products constitute over ~ per cent of the total
farm products; in II States, 35 to AZ per cent; in
six States, % to 35 per cent; in four States, of
which North Carolina is one, a to % per cent,
and in North Dakota and five Cotton States, less
than 81 per cent And where least attention is
given to live stock, there the soilis wearing out,
fastest and the commercial fertilizer bill is heav-
lest. In every State west of Chicago and the