PEDIGREE 13 



such circumstances are rare in cultivated cottons these 

 definitely distinct forms are classified as " elementary 

 species," just as any gatherer of hedgerow blackberries 

 will have noticed that two bushes growing side by side 

 may have slight but definite differences; the English 

 bramble, in point of fact, can be subdivided into a large 

 number of such elementary species. 



Where a cultivated subspecies of cotton consists of 



more than one elementary species, the first step towards 



Improvement * ts i m P rovem ^nt is the separation of these 



of Cultivated elementary species from one another, and 



Cottons. their cultivation under distinct names. 

 Short of improvements in site, in water-supply, and in 

 cultivation, this step is also the last one possible, short 

 of resort to artificial hybridizing. An elementary species 

 is as definite a thing as a chemical compound, and may, 

 indeed, be regarded as such. It cannot deteriorate nor 

 improve its constitution, however much may be done to 

 improve its environment, nor is it of the slightest use to 

 select within it for the best-looking plants. 



In the commercial cottons, however, no original ele- 

 mentary species can yet be traced, although investiga- 

 Extinct tions into the genetics of cotton are showing 

 Elementary the various components of the cultivated 

 Species. stocks, and may ultimately permit us to 

 declare how those components were combined to form the 

 original elementary species from which the stocks arose. 

 Thus, in the case of Egyptian cotton, we know that Sea 

 Island and an indigenous brown cotton of similar habit, 

 closely resembling modern Peruvian, were the original 



