508 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1962 



Types are known among the harbadense cottons of western South 

 America that fruit early enough, are independent of day length, and 

 are of good enough quality, to have provided a source from which the 

 annual cottons of the Sea Islands might have been derived [14J. The 

 route by which they reached the Carolinas must remain a matter for 

 speculation. 



The outstanding character of the Sea Island cottons is their very 

 high quality. Though a wide range of fine cottons is now available in 

 other groups, no other cottons have been bred to the quality of the 

 best of the "superfine" Sea Islands. Sea Island cotton has always 

 been a small crop. In the first decade of the 20th century it was 

 introduced into, and became established in, some of the islands of the 

 Lesser Antilles, but the main crop in the United States was virtually 

 extinguished when the boll weevil, spreading across the Cotton Belt 

 from Mexico, reached the eastern seaboard. 



EGYPTIAN COTTON 



There was a prosperous and growing market for fine cottons 

 throughout the 19th and the first half of the 20th century, and it was 

 largely supplied by another race of annual harbadense cottons, the 

 Egyptian cottons. Cotton-growing in Egypt based on harbadense cot- 

 tons was initiated by M, Jumel with perennial types in the years fol- 

 io whig 1820, The development of the Egyptian crop from this small 

 beginning has been recorded by G. C. Dudgeon [6], and the sources of 

 harbadense cottons and the probable route by which they reached 

 Egypt are fairly well understood [16]. Jumel's perennial probably 

 reached the Nile Valley from southern Nigeria by way of the trade 

 and slave routes. 



In Egypt, cultivation of a perennial crop called for a radical re- 

 development of the irrigation system. The old basin system, whereby 

 the land was flooded at high Nile and a crop was grown on the water 

 stored in the alluvial soil, made no provision for watering at low 

 river-levels. Canals w^ere deepened to bring the water to the field 

 margins at low river, and lifts were installed. Cotton proved so 

 successful that it provided both the incentive and the finance for the 

 building of barrages on the river and high-level canals, to provide 

 perennial-flow irrigation. Meanwhile, Jumel's perennial was so suc- 

 cessful that other cottons were introduced for trial. None of these 

 were satisfactory except Sea Island types, which were grown on a 

 small scale for some years. Being a form of barhadense cotton. Sea 

 Island alone of all the types introduced gave vigorous and fertile 

 hybrids with Jumel's perennial. Out of such hybrids, cotton breeders 

 selected types with the annual habit and some of the quality of Sea 

 Island, together with some of the vigor and cropping character- 

 istics of the old perennial. Thus a new race of annual barbadense 



