270 NEW PUBLICATIONS. 
effected; and as soon as the various kinds flower and fruit he must 
figure and describe them carefully, aud forward a coloured figure and 
description, accompanied by well-dried and complete specimens to 
some head-quarters of botany. Until this preliminary labour is accom- 
plished, nothing definite can be settled about the synonymy, because 
our herbarium specimens are generally ill preserved—Cotton being a 
difficult plant to dry—and few of them have fruit and flower together. 
With good materials, such as those we have insisted upon, the synonymy 
will not present any serious difficulties. 
We do not think there are more than about ten known species of 
Gossypium, all of which can be sufficiently well characterized to be 
readily distinguished.  Parlatore describes and figures seven (besides 
the doubtful species); but he has overlooked G. anomalum (micro- 
carpum), G. drynarioides, the finest flowering of all Cottons, and 
several other well-marked types contained in herbaria. He adopts all 
the old Linnzam species (viz. G. herbaceum, arboreum, hirsutum, and 
religiosum), and interprets them correctly, with the exception of G. re- 
ligiosum. That species he takes to be what in our markets and colo- 
nies is called “ Kidney Cotton ;” easily distinguished from al? other 
species by the seeds closely adhering to each other, instead of being 
free. Now, most authors regard the Kidney Cotton as G. Peruvianum, 
and restrict the name of G. religiosum of Linnzus, to a short-stapled 
tawny cotton, with loose seeds, of which the yellow dresses of the 
Buddhist priests are made, and which, from that connection, obtained 
the name of * religiosum."  Parlatore gives to this religiosum, of 
Linnzus, the name “ G. Taitense,” and describes it from dried speci- 
mens. A full account of the plant, taken from Solander’s manuscript 
Flora of Tahiti, has been published in Seemann's ‘ Flora Vitiensis.’ 
From Solander we learn that this is one of the Cottons, the flowers of 
which undergo a marked change in colour between the time they open 
and fade, being first white then pink, a peculiarity it shares with 
G. arboreum. An allied species is G. tomentosum, Nutt. mss., published 
"in 1865 in his * Flora Vitiensis,’ and now renamed, in 1866, G. Sand- 
vicense, by Parlatore. It is covered with a short canescent tomentum, 
has yellow flowers, and also produces tawny cotton. 
That Parlatore, after a conscientious study of all the Gossypiums 
available to him, should have fixed upon the Kidney Cotton as the 
G. religiosum of Linneeus, when most botanists regard one of the Nankin 
Cottons as religiosum true, may appear less strange when we state that 
