viii PREFACE 



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. 



Some of the data are not without suggestiveness to 

 students of even human physiology and genetics. 



The views expressed are purely personal, except where 

 specific reference is made to the contrary. To any who 

 may recognise their assistance inadequately acknowledged 

 I herewith proffer my regrets, with the assurance that 

 such plagiarism has not been conscious. 



The botanist may find, I fear, that the treatment is 

 far from thorough in its consideration of recent work, 

 and it may be that in many matters which I have 

 regarded as original the priority rests elsewhere. For 

 such mistakes it may be fairly pleaded that Egypt has 

 been a lonely place for a botanist until the current year. 

 Even the card index reproduced as the bibliography is 

 rather casual than systematic. 



The economic importance of any contribution to our 

 knowledge of the cotton plant needs no explanation. The 

 industry is one of the largest in England, with almost 

 unlimited influence. In Egypt itself the cotton crop is the 

 prime factor in the finance of the country ; other crops 

 and industries are relatively insignificant, and a partial 

 failure of the cotton crop may cause a financial crisis. 



It might be thought that such an important crop 

 would have been one of the first to which scientific 

 investigation should have been applied by the world in 

 general, so soon as the profitable nature of such inquiries 

 became obvious to the financier. Unfortunately, the 

 trail of the " practical man " was followed somewhat 



