SECTION III: BRAZILIAN WILD COTTON 167 



nigeria with G. brasiliense) rather than the importation and acclimati- 

 sation of G. microcarpum from South America. It is certainly 

 remarkable that in India, where G. brasiliense is often found in a 

 state of complete naturalisation, there are no instances of G. peru- 

 vianum and G. microcarpum occurring under such conditions as to 

 justify the belief that they are locally produced, still less indigenous 

 stocks. In India there are no acclimatised fuzzy-seeded American 

 cottons (such as in Africa and Egypt), and to this circumstance, 

 therefore, I venture to think we are justified in believing is due the 

 appearance of the abassi and other special cottons of Egypt. 



But the discussion of the Egyptian cottons by no means exhausts Upland 

 the story of the influence of the American fuzzy-seeded stocks, for oottons 

 to this same category has to be assigned the Uplands. I conjecture, 

 in other words, that the multitude of modern Uplands have been 

 produced by crossing G. hirsutum with some Mexican plant. No 

 person, however, seems, to have discovered the plant, to which 

 Todaro gave the botanical name G. mexicanum, in a wild or even 

 acclimatised condition. It got the name mexicanum because it was 

 presumed to have come from Mexico, but it existed there purely and 

 simply as a cultivated plant. There would, in fact, appear to be two 

 great types, one with broad almost glabrous leaves which are hardly 

 more than angled (Plate No. 41), the other with softly hairy leaves, dis- 

 tinctly five-lobed (Plate No. 42). The former may have been produced 

 by crossing G. punctatum, var. Jamaica, with G. purpurascens, and 

 the latter by crossing var. Jamaica with G. vitifolium. And I have 

 noted that variation in the former seems generally to be toward 

 glabrous leaves and naked seeds, and in the latter toward more 

 pilose states and naked seeds. The dominant ancestor would, 

 therefore, be the fuzzy- seeded G. punctatum (or G. hirsutum), and 

 the recessive parent G. purpurascens in the one and G. vitifolium in 

 the other, both of which have naked seeds. 



It would of course be unwise to place too much dependence on Con- 

 observations based on herbarium studies, hence all I desire to empha- 

 sise by the foregoing remarks is the existence of the American fuzzy- 

 seeded cottons that are perfectly distinct from the fuzzy cottons 

 of Asia. 



26. GK MUSTELINUM, Miers MS. in British Museum. 



A wild species, only once or twice separately collected hitherto. 

 Leaves broad, deeply 3-lobed, thick granularly pubescent (f, 3); 



