230 WILD AND CULTIVATED COTTONS 



be the case) or simply a result of environment and selection, is 

 immaterial from the present contention. Variation and mutation are 

 potent factors rendering it unwise to seek for arbitrary restrictions 

 or hard and fast delimitations of species ; still we can get no nearer 

 an understanding of the forms of cotton by calling them varieties 

 or races than by designating the more important and more constant 

 manifestations as species. 



Historically we know that a fuzzy green-seeded cotton was 

 largely grown in the Southern of the United States of America, and 

 that this was improved gradually by stock procured from Mexico. 

 Whether that improvement was substitution or hybridisation may be 

 an open question, but to shift the location does not make the origin 

 of G. mexicanum any easier of comprehension. There is no single 

 wild ancestor that could be supposed to have originated the diversity 

 that exists. Moreover the sudden appearance of the diverse forms 

 (often called ' sports ') is to my mind best accounted for by belief 

 in their being recessive manifestations from hybrid stocks. 



CULTIVATION. 



Eaces and Hybrids. Within the past 20 or 30 years immense 

 progress has been made in the United States of America with the 

 short staple cottons, but it is no longer possible to speak of them 

 with any degree of certainty under definite botanical names. It is, 

 accordingly, the safer course to deal with them collectively, even 

 although a few can hardly be regarded as forms of G. mexicanum. 



In fact I propose to accept the popular classification, usually 

 given by cotton growers, rather than to attempt a more scientific 

 system, until such time as the species upheld by me are more 

 widely accepted than at present. This will be seen to be the 

 position also taken by Professor Duggar of Alabama, as also by 

 Burkett and Poe ('Cotton,' 1906, pp. 86-92). I shall, therefore, 

 content myself with recording brief descriptive notes, made while 

 examining the special collections furnished for this publication by 

 Mr. Lyster H. Dewey (Botanist in Charge of Fiber Plants in the 

 Bureau of Plant Industry, Washington). In the remarks that follow 

 it will be observed I adopt one convention that may as well be ex- 

 plained, namely, to place foremost the botanical name of the ancestor 

 most strongly simulated in the hybrid and to give the less evident 

 ancestor the second position ; thus hirsutum x mexicanum would 

 mean a hybrid in which the most distinctive eyemarks are those of 



