118 WILD AND CULTIVATED COTTONS 



the Jcawasaki, n. 596 ; and the aoJti, n. 597 all from Japan ; Korean cotton, 

 n. 534 ; Transcaucasian cotton ; and a sample called ' Garo-hill cotton,' 

 n. 600 is certainly not Garo cotton, but much nearer bani. 



Certain African specimens might be mentioned in this place, though they 

 more correctly belong to one or other of the varieties presently to be indicated 

 than to the typical condition of the species. 



Historic Nomenclature. Trigault (1615) says that cotton grows in great 



s ' abundance, but is not indigenous to China in fact, was introduced 

 about 400 years before his time. Dampier (' Voyages,' 1691) speaks 

 of having seen a small cotton plant on an island near Formosa. 

 Du Halde ('Gen. Hist. China,' Engl. Transl., i., 1736, p. 19) 

 describes and figures two cottons as met with in China, one a 

 tree cotton, the other a bushy form. (Cf. Pierre Martial Cibot, 

 'Mem. Concern, les Chinois,' n., 603.) Barrow (' Travels in China,' 

 1806, 2nd ed., pp. 556-7, 560) says that the beautiful coloured 

 cotton known by the name of the chief city, Nankin, was 

 exported, the Chinese purchasing in exchange the cheaper white 

 cottons of Bengal and Bombay. It was, he remarks, planted in 

 rows, and grew for three years, thereafter being uprooted and the 

 fields prepared for other crops. Eoxburgh, writing almost about 

 the same date, observed that China cotton had recently been 

 China introduced into Bengal from China, where it is cultivated, and its 

 India* W00 ^ reckoned 25 per cent, better than that of Surat. It differs 

 from the former sort : (1) In being much smaller, with but very 

 few, short, weak branches; (2) in being, so far as my experience 

 goes, annual ; (3) in having the leaflets of the exterior calyx entire, 

 or nearly so. Then he adds : ' Lamarck's G. indioum is no doubt one 

 Nankin or of these varieties.' Further on, speaking of G. religiosum, he makes 

 cotton ^ ne observation alluded to in another place, viz. : ' Since writing 

 the foregoing, a small variety of this tawny cotton has been 

 introduced into this garden from the province of Nankeen itself, 

 but unfortunately it promises still less than the first, and the 

 colour and quality of the wool is much the same.' Fortune (' Three 

 Years' Wanderings in China,' 1847, p. 264) explains that the khaki 

 or Nankin cotton was a mere sport from the common white cotton 

 of China. 



I have accepted, in the synonymy given in the paragraph above, 

 G. Nanking as at once the most accurate and most satisfactory name 

 for the plant (or assemblage of plants) that it is desired to assign to 

 this position. Meyen was apparently the first botanist who saw 



