THE WORLD'S COTTONS — HUTCHINSON 501 



Gujerat in 1787, the annual form was new to the country, where it 

 provided an alternative to the perennial G. arhoreum known as Rozi. 



The history and relationships of the Indian species, G. arhoreum^ 

 were somewhat more difficult to unravel, since the greater part of the 

 development of the species took place under the influence of an im- 

 portant and expanding textile industry in a country where coimnuni- 

 cations were comparatively good and exchange of seed was easy and 

 frequent. Thus, on the one hand, the geographical races are not so 

 well separated or so distinct as in G. herbaceum^ and on the other, 

 there has been a much gi'eater development of agricultural forms 

 adapted to particular regions and specific needs. 



Silow [23] showed that race indicum of peninsular India was more 

 closely related to the cottons of the species G. herhaceum than are 

 other races of arhoreum. Eace indicum includes both perennial and 

 annual forms; there is good evidence that the perennial forms are 

 primitive. The Reverend E. Terry, who accompanied Sir Thomas 

 Eoe on his mission to India at the beginning of the I7th century, 

 reported that "those shrubs bear that Wood three or four years ere they 

 supplant them" [27]. 



The cottons of northern India and Pakistan are distinct from those 

 of peninsular India. Perennial forms are still to be found occasional- 

 ly in remote places in Rajputana, and in those parts of the Ganges 

 valley where cotton is not grown commercially but is appreciated as 

 a useful plant for household purposes. This northern form spread 

 widely both eastward and westward. Perennial forms in Assam and 

 Burma are derived from it, and westward it has provided the material 

 out of which the common Old World perennial cotton of Africa has 

 developed. The African form, now known as race soudanense^ was 

 probably the cotton grown by the people of Meroe, an ancient Nubian 

 kingdom, who were the first in Africa to spin and weave cotton [16]. 



The selection of annual types in the arhoreum cottons was no more 

 difficult than it had been in the herbaceums, and with the expanding 

 trade of the 19th century annual forms of arhoreum were developed ; 

 these not only supplanted their perennial ancestors, but spread into 

 areas where cotton growing had formerly been unimportant. The 

 new overseas trade in cotton and cotton goods brought with it changes 

 in demand also. Manchester had supplanted the Indian village artisan 

 as the supplier of the great bulk of cotton cloth. A large export 

 trade in raw cotton grew up, but it was to countries farther east 

 rather than to Manchester, and the export demand was for quantity 

 rather than quality. It happened that the annual types selected in 

 the Ganges Valley from the northern arboreums possessed a higher 

 "ginning out-turn" (proportion of lint to seed) and a lower quality 

 than those selected from the indicums of peninsular India. These 

 northern annuals were sufficiently distinctive to be regarded as a geo- 



