LIBRARY 
NEW YORK 
BOTANICAL 
GARDEN. 
SOME EXPERIMENTS IN THE HYBRIDISING OF 
INDIAN COTTONS. 
By PB) E. FYSON|+B 4, Fis, 
Professor of Botany at the Presidency College, Madras. 
EXPERIMENTS in crossing different varieties of cotton plants 
have often been made with the idea of uniting into one, the 
good qualities of two or more strains. Some reference to these 
may be found in Sir George Watt's book, “The wild and 
cultivated cotton plants of the world.” The first experiments 
of which records have been made, were, he says,* perhaps those 
by Rohr, who more than a hundred years ago crossed some 
American fuzzy and clean seeded species, but did not apparently 
experiment with Indian cottons. In 1884, however, Dr. 
Alexander Burns of Broach crossed Gossypiwm  obtusifolium 
var. wightiana | Guzerat cotton} with the red flowered G. arborewm, 
and obtained a plant having the good qualities of both parents. 
“The leaves were those of Arboreum, ......... the flowers were 
red with a yellow throat” and the plant cropped early and 
produced a very silky floss. But nothing seems to be known about 
the subsequent history of this cross and the plant apparently 
died out. Major Trevor Clarke was, in the sixties, experimenting 
with Indian varieties, but I have been not able to find any record 
of his results.+ In 1903, Professor Gammie,? of Poona, published 
a tentative classification of Indian cottons, and with this some 
account of crosses that he had made of Indian cottons, ‘ter se 
* Watt, Sir George, (1) “The wild and cultivated cotton plants of the world” 1907, 
p. 333 et seq. 
+ Ibid, p. 336. 
* Gaminie, G, A., (2) ‘' Classification of the Indian cottons (tentative) ”’ 1903, p, 15. 
