16 HISTORY AND DISTRIBUTION OF SORGHUM. 



awned. These forms belong, apparently, to the variety roxburghii 

 Hackel, together with the shallu of India and some of the forms of the 

 Guinea coast, under which heading this form is more fully described. 

 Similar forms are found occasionally in Xatal, where they are appar- 

 ently introduced rather than native. All these varieties are very late 

 and are apparently adapted only to our Southern States, if at all. 



Equatorial Africa. 



But little is known of the sorghums of equatorial Africa, an immense 

 region which includes roughly about ten degrees of latitude on either 

 side of the equator. They seem to be but little grown in the French 

 and German Kameruns on the west coast. Almost nothing is known 

 of their occurrence in the great interior Kongo State. On the east 

 side, however, it is known that the sorghums occur in extremely 

 numerous and variable forms. 



GERMAN AND BRITISH EAST AFRICA. 



A considerable number of sorghums have been secured from Ger- 

 man East Africa and British East Africa, lying immediately south 

 and north of the equator, respectively. Naturally they have not ma- 

 tured at any of our testing stations in this country, and hence there 

 has been but little opportunity to study them fully at first hand. 

 Many of them certainly represent entirely new groups of sorghum. 

 One of the most promising of these groups stands in some respects 

 in a position intermediate between the sorgos and durras. Some of 

 the varieties represent a northward extension of the kafir group. 

 All are grown for human food and for forage. 



Sudan. 



The Sudan has a breadth north and south of about 1,000 miles and 

 an extension east and west of about 1,000 miles. It includes, in its 

 western part, the French Sudan and the numerous small colonies of 

 the Upper Guinea coast. The principal ones of these are, from west 

 to east, Senegal and French Guinea, once known as the Kerry Coast; 

 Sierra Leone and Liberia, the old Grain Coast; the Ivory Coast, 

 now a French colony; the Gold Coast, now a British colony; and 

 finally Togoland, Dahomey, and Nigeria — German, French, and 

 British colonies, respectively, together comprising the Slave Coast. 

 The eastern part of the Sudan is included in the British-Egyptian 

 Sudan, to the east of which lies Abyssinia. The coastal region is 

 tropical and humid, the interior in large part hot and with little 

 rainfall. 



FRENCH SUDAN. 



Very few sorts have yet been obtained which are known to have 

 come from the interior of the French Sudan. These few do not 

 differ, so far as can be determined by the seeds and glumes, from 



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