In 1923, specimens of a peculiar and, until recently, puzzling cotton root trouble were received. The specimens were of cotton plants with welldeveloped tops but with extremely shallow and very greatly reduced root systems (fig. 1 a). There was no indication of attack by fungi or bacteria, nor of injury by insects, rodents, or farm implements, to account for the shortened roots ; yet it was difficult to explain how such large plants could have developed without more extensive root systems. These specimens were from widely separated points in Texas : Mercedes, Eloise, El Campo, and Chillicothe. We have had no further record of this condition on cotton in this state until the past season. However, affected cotton plants were received in 1924 from W. E. Ayres, then Assistant Director of the Delta Branch Experiment Station at Stoneville, Mississippi ; from Dr. V. H. Young, of the Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station; and from Burdette, Arkansas. During the summer of 1929, many specimens were again received from cotton planters in different parts of the State, including the four places where affected plants had been found in 1923. Affected plants were also collected by the writers from cotton fields near Itasca, Buna, Cameron, Palmer, and Von Ormy. It was possible for the first time to study the root systems of affected plants in place in the field. Cotton growers referred to such cotton plants as "rootless cotton, 77 "flat-foot,77 "club-foot/7 and "bumble-foot.77 These terms are undesirable since the affected plants actually possessed well-developed roots, which, however, were constricted just below ground. The name "root strangulation77 appears more appropriate and is suggested. Cotton root strangulation has appeared only sporadically, and is of economic importance only in limited areas. In affected fields, in 1929, losses from dead plants ranged from 3 to 8 per cent, of the stand. Many of the affected plants died early in the season, before the bolls were fully developed, while there were often one to five normal bolls on other plants. Description