154 



WILD AND CULTIVATED COTTONS 



Speci- 

 mens. 



African 

 her- 

 baceous 

 cottons. 



Eastern. 



Western. 



exactly the Indian plant. CENTRAL AND WEST AFRICA. : Eev. J. Stewart's plant 

 collected in the Zambesi country (fuzz rufous) ; Livingstone's and Kirk's 

 specimens, Zambesi Exped. n. 283 ; Barter (? Mipe) ; Perrottet, Senegal 

 also Brunner, plant from the island of St. Ludovic, Senegal (leaves very 

 small and plant almost glabrous) ; Banks of Komadugu Waube near Geidam, 

 N. Bonna, N. Nigeria, W. R. Elliott, n. 135. UPPER EGYPT. White Nile, lat. 

 9.14, Petherick, 1868, ' not cultivated, probably introduced ' ; C. E. Muriel's 

 n. 51, collected within the White Nile basin, ' probably an escape from 

 cultivation ' ; Kordofan, Dr. Pfund, n. 474 (Coll. Egypt General Staff) ; 

 Darfour, coll. (Etat-Major General Egyptien), n. 61 ; Wilkinson's ' wild 

 cotton ' from the oases of Egypt (fuzz white) ; Schweinfurth's Suakim cotton 

 n. 1607, with large seeds having a green fuzz possibly a cultivated state ; 

 French Guinea collected by Leo Farmar, n. 218, cultivated near Kindia and 

 Timbo. Fruit four-celled, fuzz almost rufous and wool harsh. 



Cultivation and Cultivated States. Several botanists have collected 

 in Africa cultivated plants which can hardly be separated from the 

 Indian series that I have placed under var. Wightiana. It is, how- 

 ever, convenient as a geographical circumstance to keep them distinct. 

 But there are many specimens in not a few herbaria that might 

 easily enough be passed off (so far as botanical characteristics show) 

 as examples of the highest-grade Gujarat staple. Some of those, for 

 example, collected during Livingstone's Zambesi Expedition at Tette 

 and named Tonje Kaja (n. 283), are of this nature. Of that plant 

 Livingstone wrote : ' The tonje cadja, or indigenous cotton, is of 

 shorter staple, and feels in the hand like wool. This kind has to be 

 planted every season in the highlands ; yet, because it makes stronger 

 cloth, many of the people prefer it to the foreign cotton.' (' The 

 Zambesi and its Tributaries,' p. 111). Lastly, a specimen, n. 646, 

 from Upper Egypt in J. Gay's herbarium (by the label identified as 

 G. herbaceum ft. frutescens, Delile, ' FL Egypt lllust.') is closely allied 

 to the Indian plant. 



I have not been able to see a sufficiently extensive series of 

 botanical specimens from Africa, nor to discover accounts published 

 by travellers that contain the details essential to enable me to 

 furnish a statement of the African cultivation, and races of plants 

 grown, that could be comparable with that given for India. In 

 a further page, under G. punctatum (p. 177), it will be seen I have 

 reviewed a very valuable paper on the ' Cotton Cultivation of Sene- 

 gambia,' and in doing so have suggested that one of the cottons there 

 mentioned may be the present plant. 



There are, however, one or two facts regarding the African 

 cottons that stand out clearly, and which are worthy of being stated 

 even at the risk of repetition : 



