108 AGRICULTURE IN THE TROPICS [PT. II 



and after the close of the war, America rapidly regained her 

 premier position, arid Indian cotton sank to the bottom of the 

 market grades. 



The cotton earliest cultivated in India would appear to 

 have been a tree cotton, probably Gossypium arboreum. At 

 the present time, although it occurs almost everywhere in 

 single specimens, and its fibre is used for making the sacred 

 string of the Brahmin and the wicks of temple lamps, this 

 species is not cultivated; the forms of cotton all annual 

 grown in India are referred by Watt 1 to G. Nanking, G. obtusi- 

 folium, and others. The Levant cotton, according to the same 

 authority, is G. herbaceum, and this, with G. hirsutum, and 

 especially G. meocicanum, and perhaps others, are cultivated in 

 the United States, while G. peruvianum is grown in Peru, 

 Egypt, etc. All these are cottons with a closely adherent 

 " fuzz " on the seed, while G. barbadense, the parent of the 

 Sea Island cotton, and others, have none, the fibre or lint 

 coming clean off, and leaving a naked seed. 



While at first it was the perennial species of cotton that 

 were cultivated indeed no wild annual species is known the 

 growth of cotton as an annual, yielding its crop in the same 

 year in which it is sown, and much less liable to disease (owing 

 to the periods of fallow), has steadily come in, and now it is but 

 rare for a tree cotton to be cultivated. At the same time, the 

 growth of the annual forms allowed of a considerable extension 

 northwards and southwards of the cotton growing area. 



India has about 10 12 million acres within the tropics 

 devoted to the growth of cotton, but the yield is very poor, 

 amounting only to about 7 million cwt. Indian cotton appears 

 on the market under many names, such as Oomrawuttee or 

 Hingunghat, Broach, Bengal, Dhollerah, Surat, Tinnevelli, 

 Westerns, etc. 



There are many mills for the spinning and weaving of 

 cotton in India, especially in Bombay, and these take more and 



1 The wild and cultivated Cotton Plants of the World. London, 1907. It is 

 right, however, to point out that many good authorities object to Sir George 

 Watt's conclusions, and that recent experiments in Mendelian breeding are also 

 opposed to them. 



