16 BULLETIN 981, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 
sown at Arlington on June 3, 1913, and the F, proved to be quite vigor- 
ous, about 90 inches tall, and almost as coarse as its sorgo ancestor. 
The panicles, however, were intermediate in character, and a few 
plants in the row developed rudimentary rootstocks. Trials of the 
progeny of this cross were continued, and several promising selections 
were made. One of these selections growing in a row at Biloxi, Miss., 
in 1917 was cut twice, first on July 17 and the second time on Octo- 
ber 2. Hach time the plants were about 7 feet tall. 
Other artificial crosses between sorghum and Johnson grass have 
been made, but their history is very similar to that of F. C. I. No. 
6573 and will not be given here. 
Selections from the different sorghum-Johnson grass hybrids have 
been grown each year in the tests at Chillicothe, Tex., and at other 
points, but nothing superior to Sudan grass has been obtained. Some 
of the selections resemble Sudan grass very much, however, (see figs. 
4 and 11), and if this valuable grass sorghum had not been discovered 
previously a fairly good substitute for it could have been developed 
in this way. | 
. DISTRIBUTION AND IMPORTANCE OF SUDAN GRASS IN AFRICA. 
Sudan grass is being cultivated sparingly under the name “ garawi’’ 
along the Nile. in lower Egypt;’mostly on military hay farms. It 
has not, however, gained any great popularity there such as it has 
attained in the United States. That this grass originated farther 
south in Africa is now fairly well established. Botanical specimens of 
it are on file from upper Egypt; also from Senegambia, a British 
possession on the west coast of Africa, and from a point near the 
northern end of Lake Nyasa in northern Rhodesia. Besides these 
more or less authentic specimens, a plant very similar to Sudan grass 
has been collected in the Katagum district of northern Nigeria. 
The fact that Sudan grass is found only under cultivation in lower 
Egypt and that it is known to be growing spontaneously along the 
upper Nile and in the Sudan farther west indicates that the grass must 
be native in that region of comparatively low rainfall just south of 
the Sahara Desert. (See the map, fig. 3.) It is more difficult to 
understand just how the grass came to be found south of the equator 
on the shore of Lake Nyasa. British colonial troops may have carried 
_ the seed with them in hay shipments from Egypt to their more south- 
ern possessions, or it may have been carried south by natives from the 
headwaters of the Nile along the chain of interior lakes which form an 
almost continuous waterway from Lake Albert Nyanza on the north 
to Lake Nyasa on the south. These, however, are only speculations. 
We are sure that Sudan grass is found growing wild in a part of Africa 
