PREFACE 



THIS book has been written with the purpose of 

 abstracting the results of a series of researches made 

 upon cotton plants in Egypt, which investigations, 

 though diverse, were connected by the desire to know 

 all that could be learned about the plant itself. Portions 

 of these inquiries have appeared in various journals, 

 but most of the material here utilised has not yet 

 been published. Where it may appear to the reader 

 that a conclusion necessitates much fuller data than is 

 placed before him, I can only ask his clemency until 

 such time as a fuller monograph shall be written. 



Primarily, I have written for those few Economic 

 Botanists who are* more botanical than economic, but I 

 have found so much genuine interest displayed by the 

 pure botanist, and by the pure economist, as well as by 

 the cotton spinner and the irrigation engineer, that in the 

 hope of giving them some explanation of the relation 

 between my inquiries and their interests, I have written 

 with divided attention. The result is avowedly un- 

 satisfactory, but the difficulty is inherent in any application 

 of natural science to economic material. 



While the subject is parochial in its origin, having 

 been studied almost entirely at Cairo, I venture to think 

 that its interest is not purely Egyptian, if only from the 

 fact that American Upland cottons have been employed 

 extensively ; the chapters on Heredity apply equally to 

 the American crop. 



