492 Dr. Francis Hamilton's Commentary 



persuaded that what in general are called species of Gossypium 

 are mere varieties, differing vastly less than the varieties of cab- 

 bage (Brassica okracea) reared in our gardens. 



In the first place, the plant being annual, or growing to a small 

 tree with a woody stem lasting for years, is a mere accidental 

 circumstance, owing to the manner of treatment. In many 

 places, the farmer considers it most for his advantage to sow the 

 seed at a season when the seed, being brought rapidly forward, 

 will produce plants which when two or three feet high will 

 nower, and give a great return by producing numerous large 

 well-filled capsules ; immediately after which the exhausted 

 plant is ploughed down for some crop of another kind, in order 

 to restore the strength of the soil before another crop of cotton is 

 taken : but the very same seed, if sown in a corner at another 

 season, so as to come on less rapidly, will produce plants that 

 last five or six years, that grow ten or twelve feet high, and that 

 acquire a woody stem as thick as a man's leg. In some parts of 

 the country an intermediate management is preferred. The 

 seed is sown in distant rows, at a season when the plant will not 

 flower until it reaches five or six feet high, and then becomes a 

 strong shrub. The plant thus reared, with weeding and manure, 

 lasts several years, and in each produces several crops ; on which 

 account, one manner of management is called Baramasya Capas, 

 or twelve-month cotton. Some varieties of the plant are reck- 

 oned by the farmers more suitable than others for each variety 

 of cultivation : but 1 am confident that every kind known in 

 India might be reared in all the three ways, and thus become an 

 annual, a shrub, or a tree. 



In the next place, the number and form of the lobes in each 

 leaf, the number of glands, and the various degrees of pubes- 

 cence, on which botanists have attempted to found specific di- 

 stinctions, in this genus are equally uncertain with the duration 



of 



