76 



WILD AND CULTIVATED COTTONS 



Not 



cultivated 

 system- 

 atically. 



Not used 

 in hybridi- 

 sation. 



production of some of the races of cotton which in India, Africa, 

 and Arabia have for many years past been referred to G. herbaceum. 



Cultivation. No one would, however, appear to have demon- 

 strated by actual experiment the forms that have resulted from 

 using G. Stocksii in crossing with other species, hence its influence 

 must be accepted for the present as purely imaginary. Indeed, I 

 am disposed to go further and question the probability of its hybrid- 

 ising with any cottons outside the present section. As met with 

 to-day, it is impossible to believe that it ever could have been 

 cultivated, since the floss is utterly worthless, and an acre, culti- 

 vated with the plant, could hardly yield more than a very few 

 pounds of fibre (see Chapter II., p. 43). 



So far as I can discover, however, this is the only member of 

 the present section of the genus that has been ever experimentally 

 cultivated, with a view to its possible utilisation as a breeding 

 stock. Dr. Cooke tells us that plants raised from Karachi seed 

 'grew luxuriantly at the Botanic Gardens, Poona, showing a 

 strong tendency to become climbers, or at all events ramblers.' 



Professor Gammie (' Cross-breeding Experiments with Cotton 

 at the Poona Farm, 1901-03') makes no mention of his having 

 attempted any experiments with this plant. But in his subsequent 

 report, ' The Indian Cottons,' there occurs the following passage : 

 ' Gossypium Stocksii, a wild plant in Sind, is by some considered 

 the parent stock of Indian cottons. I cannot concur in this opinion. 

 It resembles no Indian cotton, and possesses certain characters 

 which induce me to surmise that it is a degeneration of some 

 American cotton. No species cultivated in Sind at the present 

 time resembles it in any particular.' I should, however, go further 

 and say that G. Stocksii bears little or no resemblance to any 

 cultivated cotton, whether Asiatic, African, or American. Professor 

 Gammie is most emphatic in deprecating belief that ' the cotton 

 plants have become inextricably complicated and difficult to under- 

 stand and distinguish through hybridisation.' A greater service could 

 hardly be rendered, in the elucidation of the vexed question of the 

 hybridisation of the cottons, than by the critical study of all the 

 pure species on the part of botanists who may have the opportunity 

 of so doing. I hold G. Stocksii to be such, but if I am wrong, 

 and it is a ' degeneration of some American cotton,' let it be culti- 

 vated by every known method that tends to improvement (barring 

 hybridisation) in order to test not only the possibility of the 



