8 EXPERIMENTS IN THE HYBRIDISING OF INDIAN COTTONS. 
to the similarity exhibited by some plants in one lot—from a cross 
between Bani and Jowari—to “ American uplands,” the broad 
fat leaves and spreading branches reminding one of that type. 
The cotton plant appears to attract a large number of insects. 
Large red striped beetles bit through at the base of the flowers 
and destroyed the style. The latter too was often damaged in the 
bud by caterpillars. Boll-worms destroyed the seed, but the 
greatest damage was, I think, done by the “scarlet cotton-bug,” 
and the small ‘‘ dusky cotton-bug,” which attacked the seed as soon 
as a boll opened, aud were never got under, though a small boy 
was employed to go round and shake them off into a tin of paraf- 
fin. Any seeds that were left on the bushes were quickly eaten 
by ground vermin. They had, therefore, to be collected almost 
daily, and the picking from so many separate plants was very 
tedious. There was the further disadvantage that the field being 
some way out of the town, work there was necessarily intermittent, 
and the flowers and seeds of some plants were on that account 
never seen. The next year I was given by the authorities the 
use of land on a Government experimental farm, where my plants 
were well looked atter by the manager, who also, while I was un- 
avoidably absent from the country, made many of the notes on 
which I base the figures of the fourth generation. 
But most of the seeds sown there failed to germinate. Cotton 
seed is known to keep badly during the hot weather if ginned, as 
mine were. Or it may be that in the damp atmosphere of Madras 
these seeds were never properly dried, and so were particularly 
susceptible to heat. The local Horticultural Society has always 
found that imported garden seed, especially those of an oily 
nature, rapidly deteriorate in germinating power. In my case 
over 8,000 seeds from selected plants of F.2 were sown, but 
those that did come up were all washed out of the light sandy 
soil by a heavy fall of rain which occurred soon afterwards. The 
whole of these on which I was relying for my third generation 
were therefore wiped out, and I have to fall back on the 240 plants 
from F. 1, No. 3, referred to above as grown the previous season 
near Madras. This was the more unfortunate, as the characters 
