88 WILD AND CULTIVATED COTTONS 



occurs chiefly (so far as India is concerned) when it appears as an 

 ornamental garden plant, and its bushy condition whenever it is 

 grown as a field crop. The transition from the structural peculiarities 



Arboreous of the arboreous to those of the bushy states is, however, so gradual 



forms 08 y an ^ continuous that it is often possible (with a fairly extensive 

 collection) to arrange a panorama, which on the one side would pass 



Hairy and through numerous hairy conditions to G. neglectum, Tod., and 

 ultimately to G. obtusifolium, Boxb., and on the other an assortment 

 of less hairy forms with a more leathery texture of foliage would 

 pass almost imperceptibly to G. Nanking, Meyen, and finally into 

 G. herbaceum, Linn. 



Climatic Assortment. The former assemblage loves a moist 

 tropical clime, while the latter frequents dry and often cold regions. 

 The hairy forms are almost characteristic of the plains and central 

 tableland of India or of tropical Africa ; while the sub-glabrous states, 

 though met with on the mountains of the extreme south and again 

 on the north of India, are diffused through Central Asia to the 

 Mediterranean area and to the more northern portions of the cotton 

 regions of China and Japan. 



Within the panorama mentioned every form of Asiatic cotton 

 might find its place, and thus frustrate the attempt to isolate them 

 into varieties, still more so species. Experimental cultivation has 

 shown fairly conclusively that this state of affairs has been brought 



Hybrid!- about to a very large extent by hybridisation, or perhaps it should 

 rather be called crossing. The tendencies of 'reversion' are 

 towards certain fixed characters, and these, in the writer's opinion, 

 justify the retention of certain forms as species or varieties. For 

 example, the leaves of G. arboreum are comparatively sub-glabrous, 

 are of a leathery texture, and in the herbarium dry into a soft pale 

 green or greenish-yellow colour. They are 5-7 (mostly 5-, very 

 rarely 3-) segmented, the lobes being curvilinear in form and rarely 

 one quarter the breadth of their length. The bracteoles are of a 

 thick texture and hairy, ovate, oblong, acute, with generally only 3-4 

 teeth on the upper extremity, or they are quite entire. The flowers 

 are of a rich rose-purple colour. 



Hybrid'isation. When grown as a field crop, G. arboreum may 

 be either an annual or a perennial, and in the latter case is generally 

 sown in rows, being thus employed as a catch crop or to shade more 

 delicate annual cottons or other plants. But these agricultural 

 forms are so much modified, very possibly by hybridisation, that 



