SECTION II: BENGAL COTTON 99 



leaves, then adds that the flowers are pale yellow with purple claws, 

 and the seeds have a white to grey fuzz. 



Buchanan-Hamilton, who wrote (in 1822) a commentary on 

 Eheede's great work and had himself visited Malabar, observed that, 

 so far as he had seen in that district, cotton was raised (as Eheede 

 had described it) by the Natives, in the form of small trees planted 

 in corners of gardens, and not in fields, nor was the cotton for sale. 

 But Buchanan-Hamilton, unfortunately, had come to the conclusion 

 that all the cultivated cottons of India were mere races that differed Agricul- 



from each other 'vastly less than do the varieties of the cabbage.' tural 



. . value. 



He thus did not allow himself to realise that, even accepting so 



restricted a botanical view, they might still be of great agricultural 

 and commercial value, and, therefore, worthy of separate recognition. 

 Accordingly he omitted to add that the cotton of Malabar might be 

 described as a perennial state of the self-same plant to which he had 

 at one time assigned the name G. viridescens. On the other hand, 

 Eoxburgh, commenting on Eheede's Cudu pariti, observed that he 

 could not bring himself to believe that it was G. arboreum. The 

 fact that it was a small tree, and thus a perennial, precluded him, 

 apparently, from assigning it its true position along with the ' Bengal 

 (Dacca) cottons,' to which he most unfortunately gave the name 

 G. herbaceum. 



Two specimens in the Kew Herbarium, that may be accepted Hamil- 

 as having been procured from Eoxburgh, are named G, herbaceum Bengal 

 and G. hirsutum (see Plate No. 10, A and B). Both are, however, cottons ' 

 the same plant, and they match almost exactly Buchanan-Hamilton's 

 n. 1553, G. viridescens var. herbacea (Wall. Cat., 1880, b), and 

 n. 1552, var. hirsuta (Watt. Cat., 1880, a); they are very nearly 

 indistinguishable from each other, and are typical examples of the 

 races of the plant here discussed. In Hamilton's sets, the first 

 (1553), to which he gives the vernacular name tipki, might possibly 

 be spoken of as a transitional form approaching his red-flowered 

 cotton (n. 1549) already mentioned. Hamilton regarded it as being 

 G. herbaceum, Eoxb., (Hort. Beng., 51), and commented on it, 

 ' Colitur in Mithila agris.' The second (n. 1552) is without any 

 doubt the plant, since named G. neglectum, Tod., which Hamilton 

 identified as G. indicum, DC., Prod, i., 456; and as G. hirsutum, 

 Willd., Sp. PL in., 805. On the label of that sample he observes 

 ' Colitur in Mithila arvis.' He certainly could not have so described 

 it had it been in 1810, as it is to-day, the most abundant and most 



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