94 



WILD AND CULTIVATED COTTONS 



Yellow- 

 flowered 

 forms. 



Bombay 

 cottons. 



Pruned 



cottons 



Wa-been. Now if the plant shown by that specimen was cultivated 

 everywhere in India and very common in 1809, it must, I fear, be 

 spoken of as possibly quite unknown to-day. Its place has been 

 taken by a multitude of forms with yellow flowers and considerably 

 lower staples, that are even more remote from G. arboreum than the 

 plant here discussed. This observation is rendered significant through 

 the further circumstance, namely, that there are in Hamilton's 

 herbarium two samples of a yellow-flowered plant. These he called 

 collectively by a name never actually published, viz. G. viridescens 

 (cf. Wall. Cat., 18806., ex Herb. Ham.). Hamilton, in fact, seems to 

 have thought there were two forms of his viridescens, and these he 

 named as follows : *n. 1553 herbaceum' and 'n. 1552 hirsutum.' These 

 will be presently more fully discussed but they seem very nearly 

 identical one with the other, and, moreover, are indistinguishable 

 from G. neglectum, Tod. In passing, therefore, it may be added that 

 Hamilton's viridescens hopelessly confused (as was customary at that 

 time) two quite distinct species, viz. G. herbaceum and G. hirsutum. 

 But the chief interest in these two specimens is the remarks regard- 

 ing them : 1553 he speaks of as ' Colitur in Mithila agris,' and of 1552 

 ' Colitur in Mithila arvis.' Obviously, therefore, they were much less 

 frequently grown in Hamilton's time than his red-flowered plant, and 

 infinitely less than at the present day. 



Passing to the other side of India, a still earlier explorer, 

 Dr. Hove, studied the cottons of Guzerat (in 1787), and his speci- 

 mens are preserved in the British Museum. Among these is a 

 sample hardly distinguishable from Hamilton's Bengal plant. Hove 

 wrote of Cambay, on November 6, that the cottons were then 'in 

 full bloom, with scarlet flowers, and quite another species from the 

 yellow-flowered bush grown at Diroll, in Broach.' ' On my journey,' 

 he continues, ' to Kerwan, in Cambay, for the space of sixteen 

 miles, wherever I cast my eye I could see nothing else but cotton 

 plantations. Where the soil consisted of a heavy clay, those districts 

 were planted with the yellow sort, and those which consisted of 

 sand, or were situated higher from the adjacent ground, were 

 planted with the red species.' He then goes on to say, ' that in the 

 second year the red-flowered bushes grow to a height of seven feet, 

 but in order to make them bushy and to cause them to yield a large 

 crop, they have to be twice pruned once when they are only three 

 feet high ; the shoots are then cut down by a foot, and the second 

 pruning takes place after the first crop has been collected.' (Pruning 



