502 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1962 



graphical race (bengalense) , and they spread south into the peninsula 

 at the expense of the indicums. Thus there arose a problem that was 

 to beset the Indian cotton industry for many years. Quantity drove 

 out quality, and by misclassification, adulteration, and other malprac- 

 tices, the reputation of quality-producing areas was ruined, and coarse 

 high-ginning types were spread. Only with the establishment of the 

 Indian Central Cotton Committee in 1921 and the control of cotton 

 movements under the Cotton Transport Act was the situation brought 

 under control and the better-quality cotton protected. 



The development of annual ai'horemn cottons was not confined to 

 India. They were selected independently in Burma, though they 

 do not appear to have become so widespread there as in India. In 

 southeast Asia, colonists from peninsular India brought perennial 

 cottons with them, probably of the indicwm type, and in Indonesia 

 some annual types have arisen. But the great development of annual 

 cottons in the Far East was in China (fig. 2). According to Watt 

 [27], cotton was grown in Chinese gardens as an ornamental shrub 

 toward the end of the seventh century ; cultivation as a field crop be- 

 gan in the 11th century. The Chinese must have been among the 

 first to develop annual forms of arborewn^ since most of their crop is 

 grown in areas where winter cold would preclude the growing of 

 perennials on a field scale. The Chinese arboreums of the present 



G. barbadense ijiji 

 Egyptians I]!;! 



G. hirsutum 

 uplands and $SS^ 

 Cambodias 



Figure 2. — Distribution of annual cottons in the Old World in 1960. 



