This summer for the first time a sufficient quantity of
seed of the Brotex plant will be available for growing crops of sufficient acreage to provide cotton on a manufacturing, not only a laboratory scale. The small total of seed—about half a ton existed in the wide world—has been the chief reason for delay in the economic test. Erbifex, a totally different plant, is not grown from seed at all. It is a hybrid, of which the seed does not come true, though perhaps later the Mendelians may remedy this defect. Propagation is propagation—to use the word in its right sense—the plant is multiplied from its own tissue, not from its seed, chiefly by the process of splitting up the stools. The plant is in the perennial class, but the longest life for economic use is thought to be about seven years. After this period the fibre is apt to become too rough for treatment. At the moment the scale is small, but East Anglian farmers are being offered £4 an acre for the use of their land ; and supplies of the plant will be very rapidly multiplied. * * * *
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