192 WILD AND CULTIVATED COTTONS 



Indi- If I am correct in thinking that G. punctatum may have been 



sped" indigenous to Alabama, thence west to Arizona and Mexico (see Plates 



mens. Nos. 27 and 28 B), also in the West Indies (the Bahamas, Jamaica, 



&c.), as well as to Western Africa, it is possible that the colonists in 



Georgia were not aware of that fact, or recognised the stock procured 



for them from Europe as superior to any other. That it is indigenous 



to Africa there can be no doubt. (See Plates Nos. 27 and 28 A.) 



UPLANDS OF THE UNITED STATES. Mexican cotton seed (possibly 

 Or. mexicanum, or in some cases G. vitifolium, the plant figured by 

 Hernandez), we read, was introduced into Mississippi in the first decade 

 Early of the nineteenth century by Walter Burling. It was immediately 

 employed apparently to cross the existing plant (doubtless G. hir- 

 sutum) with the result, it is said, that the stock was greatly improved. 

 Similarly, there seems no doubt that in the more northern portions of 

 the American ' belt ' the plant first grown was the Levant (or, as it 

 was often called, Turkey) cotton. (See Asiatic cotton in Burkett and 

 Poe, ' Cotton,' plate facing page 94). On the green-seeded superior 

 cotton being introduced (1732) it appears to have been at once grown 

 over all the intermediate zone found suited to it, but toward the 

 north and on the higher land it was mainly used as an improving 

 stock on the old G. herbaceum, while, as just stated, to the south in 

 the more tropical, flat, moist regions of the Mississippi basin, 

 G. hirsutum itself was improved by being crossed with G. vitifolium 

 and G. mexicanum. 



Multipli- What has been the result ? Through vigorous and continuous 



races' 1 f en or ^ 8 * improve the stock, as Mr. Tracey has shown (see Dabney, 

 ' Cotton Plant &c.,' I.e., Chapter on Cultivated Varieties), over 100 

 distinct races, derived primarily from G. hirsutum, have been brought 

 into existence. It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that in the 

 trade there are various grades in what are called short staple cottons, 

 which, by some writers, have been grouped as Georgian and Upland 

 Georgian, while others think these and such like names have hardly 

 any more value than as denoting localities of production. 



In 1894 I had the pleasure of receiving an interesting series of 

 botanical specimens, representative of the United States cultivated 

 cottons, in consequence of the kind co-operation of Professor H. H. 

 Eusby. In reply to an inquiry made by me as to how far the cottons 

 of the lower and more southern tracts were or were not G. herbaceum, 

 Mr. S. M. Tracey, then Director of the Mississippi Agricultural 

 Station, replied in April 1895 : ' I was certainly in error in using the 



