148 THE COTTON PLANT IN EGYPT CHAP. 



much indebted to three Alexandrian gentlemen,* who have 

 assisted him in the past, by their expert opinion, given 

 under all the difficulty involved by the smallness of the 

 samples available, and their results^ though open to these 

 objections, are summarised thus : r 



Afifi x Truitt : F,, Yannovitch ; F 2 composed of 

 7 Afifi, 24 Abbassi, 22 Yannovitch, together with 17 

 Hindi or Upland. Ratio, of Egyptian to non-Egyptian, 

 being 53: 17. The non-Egyptians bred true in F 3 , while 

 some Egyptians broke up. One plant from the F 2 , the 

 lint of which was described as being similar to that of 

 the Afifi cotton when first introduced in 1887, gave a 

 remarkable series in F 3 ; the limits of the brown Peruvian 

 type of lint were never transgressed, but within these 

 bounds we obtained almost every known modification ; 

 the old Afifi, modern Afifi, Ashmouni of the Fayoum, 

 Upper Egypt Ashmouni, and most remarkable of all 

 the original Jumel cotton of Mohammed Ali's time. 

 Within the limits of this one family there was plainly 

 an opportunity for much research. 



The examination of the King x Charara F. 2 was com- 

 plicated by the extreme range of lint length, which ran 

 from 18 to 40mm. Many plants were confessedly judged 

 as non-Egyptian because of their shortness, and hence the 

 fact that the ratio of Egyptian : non-Egyptian was 108 : 

 71, or almost 9 : 7, cannot be regarded as significant. 



Summarising this and similar evidence, it would seem 

 safe to affirm that some striking feature of the lint 

 possibly the diameter is inherited as a simple factor. 

 Complications may be introduced gametically, and also by 

 " autogenous fluctuation." Until we can define the reasons 

 which cause an expert to call one sample by one name and 

 another by another, our investigation must be limited to 

 rule of thumb. 



* Mr. E. A. Benachi, now Minister of Agriculture for Greece, and Messrs. 

 Marco Nacamuli and H. C. Thomas, of the National Bank of Egypt. 



