6 WILD AND CULTIVATED COTTONS 



so named by the earliest trustworthy authors. Where thought 

 desirable, also, I have reproduced the first or most generally accepted 

 picture of each species. Having thus made up my mind as to the 

 species that exist, I have next endeavoured to weigh carefully all 

 that might be said in favour of or against certain forms being retained 

 g-n. as distinct or reduced to older species (synonyms). But in doing so 



onyms. j h ave generally followed the rule that, wherever possible, it was 

 preferable to retain as a species a recognisable form, rather than to 

 reduce it to the position of a sub-species or variety. I have in 

 fact viewed a variety of cotton as a form that might, with an 

 extensive assortment of specimens, be found inseparable from the 

 species with which it was associated. This view becomes essential 

 when cultivation is realised as having so interrelated a large 

 percentage of the forms, that we are confronted very nearly with 

 the necessity of either reducing all to one species or accepting 

 many species. 



Un- Wild Species. The existence of numerous undoubted wild forms 



wild te (some of which have never been recorded as met with under cultiva- 

 species. tion) renders the latter course unavoidable. I have accordingly re- 

 tained as species very nearly all the plants found either wild or in a 

 state of complete acclimatisation, especially when the nature of the 

 flosses afforded was such as to justify the belief that these plants 

 possibly manifested a close approximation to the original specific 

 condition. Where such wild plants have at any time been treated 

 as species by authors, I have selected the earliest name for each and 

 retained that to denote the wild condition, even although the culti- 

 vated states might with difficulty be separable from it. This course 

 Cultivated seemed desirable as a basis from which to study the races of cultivated 

 cottons, and thus, as De Candolle recommended, I have gone back 

 to the wild (or presumably wild) plants and retained the majority of 

 the names given by Linnaeus and his predecessors, as the names 

 chiefly of cultivated stocks. And in support of this it may be 

 observed, there would seem hardly any doubt, that no truly wild 

 cotton was discovered and named before the close of the first decades 

 of the nineteenth century. Accordingly all the names given by 

 botanists to species of Gossypium, prior to that period, almost of 

 necessity denote cultivated forms. 



I have not, however, named every wild Gossypium seen by me, 

 but rather have limited myself to those likely to have a practical 

 bearing on the larger issues, or to those of which sufficient material 



