SECTION IV: SEA ISLAND COTTON 287 



with the great reputation of the Surinam and Cayenne cottons at 

 a slightly earlier date, might easily account for the early West 

 Indian colonists having procured seed both from the Southern Islands 

 of the Lesser Antilles and from Guiana. (See p. 20.) Similarly 

 we know they had procured the kidney cotton of Brazil. By the 

 beginning of the eighteenth century the European planters of the West 

 Indies were thus growing these two plants side by side. I assume, 

 purely and simply from a botanical study of the Sea Island plant, 

 that a cross between the two species mentioned may have been Origin, 

 naturally accomplished, the progeny being recognised as a new and 

 superior race, hence preserved and in time developed into the Sea 

 Island plant as we now know it. At all events G. barbadense, var. 

 maritima, which in some respects is intermediate between G. viti- 

 folium and G. brasiliense in its characteristics, was not known until 

 subsequent to the dates I have mentioned, and originated in the 

 country where the two types named were, very possibly, first brought 

 into juxtaposition. It is on these grounds mainly that I am led to 

 contemplate hybridisation as a possible stage in the production of this 

 most valuable and highly specialised race of cotton. (See pp. 334, 346.) 



But there is still another point of considerable importance to be Distri- 

 borne in mind. If the original stocks came from Surinam for the one, 

 and Pernambuco for the other ancestor, they came from latitudes that 

 lie, the former north and the latter south, between 5 and 10 of the 

 Equator. The progeny was finally perfected and established far to 

 the north in the Sea Islands of Georgia and South Carolina, viz. 

 between 30 and 33 north latitude, while Barbados, Guadeloupe, 

 &c. (the islands of the West Indies in other words), became the half- 

 way houses, placed as they are between the 15 to 20 of north 

 latitude. But starting from what may be called the promontory of 

 Guiana and passing through the successive chains of the Antilles, the 

 area of cultivation of the plant here discussed passes naturally to the 

 shores of Florida, Georgia and Carolina. Outside that region it has 

 never, so far, been successfully grown, and within even that area 

 there are localities that produce much inferior staples to others. 



My studies of the pollen-grains have not been conducted for suf- Pollen- 

 ficient time to admit of that repeated confirmation that is essential to grai 

 justify the formulation of definite opinions. But I may perhaps add 

 that the presence of two kinds of grains in all the examples of Sea 

 Island investigated by me, leads me to regard that circumstance as 

 corroborative of the conception that it is a hybrid stock, the more 



