286 



WILD AND CULTIVATED COTTONS 



American 

 record. 



Early- 

 flowering 

 annual. 



Pruning 

 cotton. 



particulars will be found of an early historic record that points fairly 

 conclusively to the supposition that direct hybridisation has been 

 resorted to in the production of the high grades of West Indian cotton. 

 Once so produced, selection on the lines above indicated may be accepted 

 as sufficient to account for the subsequent elaborations in direct 

 accord with environment and the requirements of trade. Speaking of 

 hybridisation it may be here mentioned that Mr. W. Austin Cannon, 

 in a most instructive paper entitled ' Spermatogenesis of Hybrid Cotton ' 

 (see 'Bull. Torrey Bot. Club,' vol. xxx. [1903], pp. 133-72) says that 

 G. barbadense was one of the ancestors used by him in his experi- 

 ments and studies. The possibility of hybridisation having played 

 a distinct, if not an important, part may, therefore, be confidently 

 accepted. (See p. 339.) 



The actual record of the United States may be now recapitulated. 

 About the year 1786 Sea Island cotton was carried to Georgia from 

 the West Indies (cf. p. 20). The hybridisation had thus been 

 accomplished before the arrival of the stock if the idea of hybridi- 

 sation be accepted as at all necessary to account for the plant as known 

 to us. If hybridisation be rejected, then the dilemma is presented 

 of where the plant came from, since, in spite of the fact that Linnaeus 

 appropriated for it the name G. barbadense, there is no evidence of 

 its being an indigenous species in that or any other of the West 

 Indian islands. It is, in fact, a species, the original habitat of which 

 cannot now be traced. The first plants raised in Georgia were in- 

 jured by the frost in the autumn before they had fruited. Fortunately 

 they came up again from the roots, and succeeded in producing a few 

 ripe fruits before the fall of the ensuing year. These were carefully 

 preserved and the seed from them sown the following year, the result 

 being that in a few years' time the development of an early-flowering 

 annual race (from what apparently was originally a perennial stock) 

 became an accomplished fact, which not only gave to America, but 

 to the world, the finest long-staple annual cottons. 



This historic sketch brings to mind the practice in Guade- 

 loupe, as narrated by Pere Labat in 1724, with G. vitifolium (one 

 of the ancestors, doubtless, of the Sea Island plant), namely, of 

 cutting down the plants every two or three years. The black-seeded 

 cotton of that island was grown as a perennial, but it was fully 

 recognised that annual, or at most, biennial shoots afforded the finest 

 grade cottons. Labat tells us that the plant so treated produced 

 a much superior cotton to that of the Levant, and this fact, together 



