332 WILD AND CULTIVATED COTTONS 



cross breeding of his five species G. barbadense, G. religiosum, 

 G. arboreum, G. herbaceum, and G. hirsutum. On the other hand, 

 Mr. G. A. Gammie, Professor of Botany at Poona, Bombay, in his 

 recent report ('The Indian Cottons,' 1905) reduces all the Indian 

 cultivated forms to G. obtusifolium, and treats the still older species 

 of Linnaeus (G. herbaceum and G. arboreum) as only sub-species 

 under the Roxburghian plant. (See p. 5.) He would, moreover, not 

 appear to regard hybridisation as of any practical value whatever. 

 Accordingly he observes that the so-called species and hybrids are 

 merely cultivated races evolved by time and environment from one 

 prototype. 



After many years of careful study of the Indian cottons, both in 

 the field and in the herbarium, I am constrained to join issue with 

 Dr. Aliotta and writers of his school in thinking that the hybridisa- 

 tion of the species of Gossypium, as well as the crossing of its 

 varieties and races, has played an important r61e, though I do not of 

 course agree to the reduction of the ancestral stocks to five forms. 

 Still I am satisfied that many of the more highly prized cultivated 

 cottons are not species botanically, but races, perhaps rather natural 

 hybrids (some of the more recent being artificial), adapted by selection 

 to man's requirements and to environment. I am at one in fact with 

 the army of workers in America, who not only say they have pro- 

 duced endless forms by crossing, but who regard that agency as of 

 the greatest possible importance. 



Tenden- Mr. S. M. Tracey, for example (in Dabney's ' The Cotton Plant ' 



cies ' (1896), pp. 197-224), in dealing with the 'Cultivated Varieties/ 



remarks : ' Although the plants from a single line of crosses, as fertil- 

 ising Peterkin with Allen, will vary widely, still it is a general rule 

 that the character and habit of the future plant will be more like those 

 of the female parent, while the fruit, the boll and its contents, will be 

 more like those of the male parent.' So again, ' The tendency of the 

 plant to vary from typical form of any variety will be back toward its 

 original form rather than in any other direction.' From these and such 

 like considerations is doubtless due the affirmation that, from one or 

 two plants specially cultivated and as a consequence of careful selection, 

 it might be possible to produce all the chief types of cultivated cottons. 

 Hence it may be said that with few other cultivated plants is a more 

 Hybrid rigid selection of seed necessary than with cotton. Moreover, there 

 stocks. seems little doubt but that historically it can be shown that G. hirsutum, 

 Or. mexicanum, G. mtifolium and G. barbadense, as manifested 



