190 WILD AND CULTIVATED COTTONS 



to the ground. Cavanilles was on more sure ground. He possessed 

 a botanical specimen of a plant grown in Paris which he identified 

 with Plukenet's plate. His description and admirable illustration 

 denote, however, G. Nanking, Meyen, so that his G. hirsutum must 

 be reduced to that species. 



White In passing it may be here pointed out that the habitat Barbados, 



cotton given by Plukenet, and America, given by Cavanilles, are at first 

 sight difficult to explain. But it is a matter of history that the 

 French colonists endeavoured to acclimatise ' White Siam Cotton '- 

 a cotton much talked of at that time in the State of Louisiana 

 during 1758, so that the plants grown in Paris may quite easily have 

 come from that source. Both Swartz and Willdenow described the 

 seeds of G. hirsutum as being adherent, a circumstance, as I have 

 already stated, that misled many subsequent writers and even justi- 

 fied the amalgamation of G. brasiliense (G. religiosum of certain 

 writers) with the present species. 



It is, perhaps, hardly necessary to repeat that the specimens 

 named G. hirsutum by Linnaeus himself, in his own herbarium, are 

 not the species of that name indicated in the ' Species Plantarum,' 

 but correspond with the plant in the ' Sy sterna Naturae," and repre- 

 sent the cultivated Indian plant that has recently come to bear the 

 Failures name G. Wightianum, Tod. Hence, as already affirmed, the con- 

 j^g rC fusion of a hirsute American (or possibly West Indian) plant having 

 leaves mostly 3-lobed with an Indian hirsute plant with leaves 

 mostly 5-lobed, has disfigured the literature of cotton down to the 

 present day, and possibly accounts to some extent for the reputed 

 failures to cross-breed American and Asiatic stocks. 



CULTIVATION. 



Trevor HYBRIDISATION AND SELECTION OF STOCK. Major Trevor Clarke, 



opinion*! wno devoted much attention some years ago to the study of the 

 methods of improvement of cotton, gave it as his opinion that it was 

 not possible to cross the green-seeded American cotton with the 

 Asiatic races. There is only one specimen of Major Clarke's in the 

 Kew Herbarium, and that is most curious. It is evidently a hybrid, 

 but derived mainly from G. purpurascens crossed very likely with 

 G. punctatum. It has the leaves of the former with the pilose 

 condition of the latter, but the seeds shown along with the sample 

 are very large, coarse, and densely coated with rusty fuzz, so that 

 if they can be accepted as having belonged to the specimen, its 



