172 



WILD AND CULTIVATED COTTONS 



Speci- 

 mens. 



Wild 

 cotton. 



Jamaica. 



there is an excellent specimen, collected by Dr. J. Brown-Lester (n. 59) 

 during the Gambia Boundary Commission of 1890-91. Turning now to 

 the Indian series, there is a specimen collected by Mr. J. F. Duthie at 

 Gilgit, Kashmir (n. 12,312) during 1892. This was found under cultivation, 

 and known to the people by the name keas (Batti). Lastly a plant procured 

 from Dr. Jameson, of the Saharanpur Botanic Gardens, and said by him 

 to be Mauritius cotton. 



In the Herbarium of the Boyal Botanic Gardens, Calcutta, there are 

 several sheets of this plant. One collected by Sir D. Brandis in Burma, in 

 1858, is perhaps a hybrid. Had there been no fruits and seeds on the sheet 

 it would very possibly have gone to G. purpurascens, as the plant is more 

 glabrescent than is customary ; but do the fruits and seeds belong to the 

 flowering twigs ? The other examples are all marked H. B. C., and named 

 by Kurz as G. religiosum. It is thus highly likely that some thirty or forty 

 years ago the effort was made to grow this plant in the Calcutta Gardens, 

 as also many other species of cotton. (Cf. G. Nanking, p. 117, and G. obtusi- 

 folium, p. 140.) 



In the Herbarium of the Beporter on Economic Products to the Govern- 

 ment of India there are several examples of this species, but all these are 

 the pilose var. nigeria. On two occasions I collected it as a field crop, first 

 at Gondal in February 1894 (n. 1,797). On this occasion the information 

 was given me that the seed had, some years previously, been imported 

 from Louisiana. The second occasion I collected it at Sauner, Nagpur, C. P., 

 in December 1894 (n. 13,819). Though much like G. hirsutum, the flowers 

 are yellow with purple spots, the leaves much smaller, and the seeds have 

 an imperfect or very short and striated fuzz. Still a third example (n. 1,749) 

 was sent me in 1894, by Mr. B. P. Mehta, from Bhavnagar Kathiawar 

 Experimental Farm. This was observed to produce bractlets in place of 

 nectaries, and on that account was thought curious. It was said to yield 

 a rufous (khaki) coloured floss, hence it may possibly have been a recessive 

 manifestation approximating toward the ancestral type of G. punctatum 

 from a stock otherwise G. hirsuttwn, or it may have been procured from 

 the neighbouring State of Gondal, and thus been the Louisiana plant already 

 mentioned. The specimen before me is too fragmentary to enable me to 

 see the bractlets, but these structures had not been described by Cook at 

 the time Mr. Mehta made his observation, and there is thus no occasion to 

 doubt the accuracy of the statement. Mr. Mehta's specimen exactly 

 matches the Molango cotton (see p. 231) grown at Washington. 



Nomenclature. The American form of this plant would appear 

 to have been first seen by Bohr, who speaks of it as growing wild 

 on the rocks that surround the harbour of Williamstown, in Curagao. 

 (Cf. with G. Nanking, p. 120). This was in 1790, or nearly fifty 

 years before the time when Macfadyen reported having found it 

 wild at Eockfort in Jamaica. 



One of the earliest allusions to West African cotton, and, there- 

 fore, possibly this species is in Eamusio, where, he says, cotton 

 thread and cloth were sold in Nigeria in 1450. John Leo (Giovan 



