158 WILD AND CULTIVATED CO1TONS 



in accepting G. punctatum of Eichard as being this plant, however 

 Arabia. it would then appear to be indigenous to Abyssinia, since it has 

 there distinctive vernacular names, such as hont. Forskal collected 

 it in Arabia. It may, in fact, be described as a warm temperate 

 species and the plant which formerly yielded much of the so-called 

 ' short-staple American cotton ' of commerce. 



Speci- Citation of Specimens. The following record of some of the specimens 



mens. 8e en by me in Herbaria may be usefully mentioned in this place : 



EUROPE: Linnean Herb. No. 1 (Plate No. 24 A); Clifford Herb. (Plate 

 No. 24 B), two sheets (now in British Museum); Herb. Philip Miller 

 (in Sloane Herb., vol. 294, f. 45); Greece, hort. Benth. (1836); Greece 

 (Berger), ex J. Gay (1868); Athens, cult. herb, de Heldreich (1848); 

 Griechenland, Hohenack, Arzn. u. Handelspfl., n. 288 ; herb. Shuttleworth, 

 cult. Algiers and Asia Minor ; Dardanelles, Ascherson (1883), n. 948 ; 

 Crete, Dr. A. Baldacci, n. 230; Cephalonia, collected by Schimper and 

 Wiest (1834) (and named G. indicum, Lam.) ; Haussknecht, cult. Syria 

 (1868). CHINA AND JAPAN : none. MALAYA : none. AUSTRALIA : none. 

 INDIA : Aitchison, Delim. Com. Afghanistan (Khorasan, n. 1034, stems 

 and leaves dry into the usual pale colour, but leaf-stalks and flowers are 

 apparently purple with maturity); Gilgit (1827), herb. Winterbottom, n. 981, 

 same as next (seed very large, coarse, and floss very woolly and inferior) ; 

 Gilgit, Giles (1886), n. 250, at 4,600 feet (has the long spreading hairs of the 

 species very abundant). PERSIA : Armenia and Northern Persia, in Ball, 

 herb, (now in Edinburgh) ; in Herb. Petropolitani (Armenia and Persia), 

 also Dr. Stapf 's specimen (these possibly represent a form that may be taken 

 as a hybrid between G. Nanking and G. Tierbaceum ; the leaves are mostly 

 3-lobed and have 3 glands). AFRICA: No specimens that could be called 

 typical (just as in India, so in Africa, a good many cultivated plants 

 approximate to this type from G. Nanking). AMERICA : none of G. herbaceum 

 in Kew and British Museum Herbaria (the plant grown in the States under 

 this name has much larger leaves, and is more hairy than the type, and is 

 apparently a cross between the true Levantine plant and G. hirsutum. It 

 is the plant that is so admirably figured by Parlatore under the name 

 G. Tierbaceum). * 



It will thus be seen that outside the tract of country that stretches from 

 the shores of the Mediterranean to Afghanistan, the plant to which I think 

 the name G. herbaceum must be restricted does not occur. 



European Nomenclature. There is every reason for believing that this was 

 tion! * ne species first cultivated in Europe. The earliest records would 

 seem to point to a production near Crimea, but the conquests of the 

 Saracens led to its introduction into Spain, in the twelfth century 

 (cf. Eben-el-Awan of Seville), and from there it extended to Italy 

 (of. ' Targioni-Tozzetti,' translated by Bentham in Jour. Hort. Soc. 

 London, ix. (1855), p. 149). Whether it was grown in Greece at a 

 still earlier period seems uncertain, but with the conquest of 

 Constantinople its cultivation was greatly increased and diffused 



