42 WILD AND CULTIVATED COTTONS 



red or khaki cottons. Buchanan-Hamilton regarded a red floss as 

 uniformly denoting but one species, for which he suggested the 

 name G. croceum. 



Wild There are, moreover, still other truly wild species which, with 



cottons. j uller kno^edge, would doubtless find places in one or other of the 

 above groups. I have only mentioned the species of which I have 

 examined ripe seeds, and am thus in a position to speak of their 

 flosses. But the assortment as it stands is, I venture to think, 

 highly instructive. It brings out certain peculiarities with which it 

 is imperative the cultivators of the cotton plant should be familiar. 

 Of these the following may be pointedly indicated : 



Bust- 1. A rust-coloured woolly coating of the seed would seem to be 



loured an a i mos t generic peculiarity of Gossypium. The presence of a 

 white fleece may accordingly be regarded as a condition brought 

 about by cultivation. All known truly wild species have a red- 

 coloured woolly coating to the seed, which may or may not be 

 referable to two layers, an inner, or fuzz, and an outer, or floss. 

 The presence of a red tint in the fuzz or floss is accordingly either 

 an indication of low-grade staple, or a manifestation of degeneration 

 a reversion to the ancestral type. 



Naked 2. The presence or absence of a fuzz to the seed cannot be 



accepted as an accidental circumstance of no value. There are 

 wild species that possess both a fuzz and floss (that is to say, 

 have velvety seeds), others that have a fuzz but no floss, and still 

 others that have a floss but no fuzz ; they possess, in other words, 

 what are called naked seeds. 



Variation. There is every reason, therefore, for believing that these pecu- 

 liarities were originally more or less fixed (as they are to-day with 

 all the undoubted wild species), and might have been accepted aa 

 affording a satisfactory basis for a scientific classification into the 

 three or four groups above indicated. But cultivation and hybridisa- 

 tion, and perhaps also natural adaptation to altered environment, have 

 undermined the value of these characteristics ; hence it is no un- 

 common experience for the progeny of a naked seed to become fuzzy- 

 seeded, or vice versa. Man has carried the cottons of one region 

 to another, and often subjected them to absolutely foreign influences. 

 We must, therefore, discover some satisfactory explanation of this 

 special or increased tendency to variation ; but the fact remains the 

 same, that with pure wild species the peculiarities of the fuzz and 

 floss are of undoubted specific if not of sub-generic value. 



