136 WILD AND CULTIVATED COTTONS 



Early this kind of cotton appears to be grown in China, for a passage in 

 records. Amyot's ' MSmoires ' (n., 606) is as follows : ' Cotonniers Arbres, qui 

 ne devoient 6tre fertiles qu'apres un bon nombre d'ann6es.' But it 

 is remarkable that an identical statement to that of Polo is given by 

 Bashid-ud-din regarding Gujarat: 'the cotton plants grow like 

 willows and plane trees, and yield produce ten years running.' 

 Mahommed Masum, a later author, speaks of the cotton plants of 

 Schwan in Sind ' growing as large as trees, inasmuch as men pick the 

 cotton mounted.' The Bev. E. Terry, who accompanied Sir Thomas 

 Eoe's Embassy to India (' Voyage to East India in 1615,' p. 368), 

 speaking of the neighbourhood of Surat, says : ' For their Cotton- 

 wooll they sow seed, and very large quantities of Ground in East- 

 India are thus seeded. It grows up like small Eose-bushes, and then 

 puts forth many yellow blossoms ; those afterward falling off, there 

 remain little Cods, about the bigness of a Man's Thumb, in which the 

 substance at first is moist and yellow ; but as they ripen they swell 

 bigger till they break their Covering, and after, in short time, that 

 within them becomes Wool, as White as Snow, and then they gather 

 it. Amongst that Wool they find seeds to sow again as they have 

 occasion ; but those shrubs bear that Wool three or four years ere 

 they supplant them. Of this Cotton wool they make divers sorts of 

 white Cloth.' 



Graham (I.e.) refers to a cotton for which he proposed the name 

 G. Vaupellii. This, he says, is found at Sidhpur, is a shrub eight to 

 ten feet high and known as hiragtinda-kdpas. Eoyle ('Cult, of 

 Cotton,' pp. 144-5, 152), quotes Vaupell as saying that it was grown 

 near the large towns of Eastern Gujarat and that ' its wool is the 

 finest of any . . . and only used in the manufacture of the finest 

 muslins.' 



There is only one perennial cotton with yellow blossoms in 



Gujarat, and accordingly it seems safe to assume that it was the 



plant to which Marco Polo, Terry, and other early travellers referred. 



Annual Here then we have another indication that the perennial cottons 



arece . were once upon a time more largely cultivated than they are to-day, 



crop. if we are not justified in believing that the perennial cottons were the 



early condition, the annual plant a product of greater skill in 



agriculture. Dr. Hove (170 years after Terry's time) repeatedly 



alludes to perennial cotton seen by him both red and yellow 



flowered but he also gives a full account of the cultivation of the 



annual plant, and devotes special attention to what he calls a new 



