SECTION III: AFRICAN COTTON 175 



guided forward, a full realisation is not only possible but highly 

 likely to be accomplished. Judging purely and simply from 

 botanical evidence, greater success is likely to be attained in the 

 coast tracts at least, with the acclimatisation of American Uplands 

 and in the more interior and northern tracts, of Egyptians, than 

 with any other foreign stocks. But by far the most hopeful 

 and enduring results should be looked for in the selection and 

 improvement of indigenous races. The establishment of seed farms Seed 

 a system I recommended for India some years ago is I believe 

 the immediate step which should be taken. The issue from such 

 farms of improved and acclimatised seed would not only give better 

 results but be open to less risk of failure and disappointment than 

 the issue of untried freshly imported foreign seed, however highly 

 commended by experience in other countries. 



It may now serve the present purpose to set forth some of the Results 

 opinions and results hitherto attained : a lne ' 



WEST AFRICA. Long years ago Poiret (' Diet, des Scien. Nat.' 

 11, 1818, p. 47) wrote : Africa, though it contains large stretches of 

 land very favourable to cotton, furnishes little to commerce. It 

 is found in Barbary, in the Kingdom of Tunis, and in Bildulge'rid, 

 but it is not taken sufficient care of, and in consequence is hardly 

 a commercial product. The inhabitants of these countries prefer to 

 clothe themselves from the wool of their flocks. The same is the 

 case in Egypt, where the cotton cultivation is resorted to for domestic 

 purposes only. In the coast towns of Senegal, Sierra Leone and Negro 

 Guinea it is customary to see samples of cotton brought from the 

 interior of the country by the merchants who trade with the negroes. 

 This cotton, although very soft and white, is thought less of by the 

 negroes themselves than the cotton which resembles the yellow Siam 

 cotton found in the Kingdom of Dahome 1 . I do not know the tree 

 which produces this fine cotton, but it is certain that several species 

 of cotton grow naturally on the coast of Guinea, and that some have Guinea 

 been transplanted to the Antilles, where they succeeded very well.' 



Some of the more recent writers exemplify the development that 

 has since Poiret's time taken place, but they still maintain the 

 separation of the coast tracts as distinct from the more interior 

 regions : 



Mockler-Ferryman (I.e.), for example, gives perhaps the fullest 

 account of the cultivation of cotton in West Africa as yet published. 



