THE COTTON PLANT 



Specific 

 Influences. 



Hybridisation. 



Number of 

 Species. 



GOSSYPIUM 



IMPROVEMENT 

 OP STOCK 



Africa), and G. taitense (of the Polynesian Islands). In passing it may 

 be here added that no Asiatic indigenous cotton has a naked seed, and 

 further that with the fuzzy-seeded Asiatic forms the bracteoles are united 

 below, whereas with the American fuzzy-seeded cottons the bracteoles 

 are free. The appearance, therefore, of these peculiarities in certain 

 cultivated or long acclimatised plants may safely be regarded as denoting 

 definite influences and not accidental sports or climatic adaptations. 



It has sometimes been upheld, but with little justification, that the 

 crossing of fuzzy-seeded and naked-seeded cottons (or of Asiatic and 

 American cottons) was impossible. But there is perhaps no subject on 

 which greater diversity of opinion exists than in the value or even possi- 

 bility of hybridisation of the species of Gossypiutn. One set of writers 

 affirms that it is difficult, if not impossible, to prevent hybridisation, while 

 another stoutly upholds the belief that hybridisation is of no practical 

 value, if they do not indeed go so far as to deny the possibility of its accom- 

 plishment in nature. A parallel to this diversity (and perhaps a consequent 

 one) is the degree of acceptance of the species as established by botanists. 

 Some writers, such as Todaro, think there may be as many as 54 species, 

 while others, such as Parlatore, reduce them to 7, and Aliotta to 5 species, 

 with numerous varieties and cultivated races or hybrids under each. Bu- 

 chanan-Hamilton went further and reduced all to 2 (or perhaps 3) species, 

 viz. the black (naked) seeded and the white (fuzzy) seeded, with as a third 

 the red (kakhi) seeded cottons. In fact the controversy regarding the 

 number of species dates even from before the formation botanically of the 

 genus Gossy2>ium, but I venture to think it could never have existed 

 and cannot exist to-day, when the undoubted wild forms are made the 

 basis of classification. 



The confliction as to hybrids may be exemplified by the writings 

 of two of the most recent authors. Aliotta (Riv. Crit. Gen. 

 Goss. 1903) gives an elaborate statement of the races of cultivated 

 cottons which he thinks have been produced through the cross-breeding 

 of his five species G. barbadense, G. reliffiosum, G. arboreum, 

 G. Jierbaceum, and G. hirsutum. On the other hand, 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. obtusifoliitni. 

 He would, moreover, not appear to regard hybridisation as of any prac- 

 tical value whatever. He observes that the so-called species and hybrids 

 are merely cultivated races evolved by time and environment from one 

 prototype, but he nevertheless adds somewhat paradoxically that they 

 are capable of being crossed with facility and that their descendants are 

 fertile. 



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

 and the herbarium, I am constrained to join issue with Aliotta and writers of 

 his school in thinking hybridisation has played an important role, though I am 

 not of course prepared to reduce the ancestral stocks to five forms. Still I am 

 satisfied that many of the more highly prized cultivated cottons are not species 

 botanically (though it may be convenient to retain for them specific names), but 

 are races and natural hybrids (some of the more recent 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 produced endless 

 forms by crossing, but who regard that agency as of the greatest possible 

 importance. Tracey (Dabney, The Cotton Plant, 1896, 197-224), in dealing with 

 the cultivated varieties, remarks, " Although the plants from a single line of 

 crosses, as fertilising Peterkin with Allen, will vary widely, still it is a general 



592 



American 

 Hybrids. 



