202 WILD AND CULTIVATED COTTONS 



and the samples from J. Gay's herbarium (' Jard. de Morel,' October 1811) 

 (32 B). In the Edinburgh Herbarium there is a series of examples from the 

 Botanic Gardens, Saharanpur, India, some of them named G, barbadense. 

 In the British Museum Herbarium there are specimens collected in Florida 

 in 1853 by Structer, and another from St. Louis on the Missouri, collected 

 by Drummond in 1832. In M. de Candolle's Herbarium, Geneva, there is 

 Thonning's plant, collected in Guinea, which may possibly be G. prostratum, 

 Schum. et Thon. (which see). 



In the Herbarium belonging to the Beporter on Economic Products to 

 the Government of India, there are the following : n. 1,804, collected in 1894 

 at Gondal in Kathiawar; nn. 12,307 and 12,320; lastly a cotton from 

 Singhbum, known as badi, cultivated at Sibpur Exp. Farm. 



Nomenclature. It is not uncommon to find popular writers 



Religious affirming that the name reliqiosum was given to denote a cotton 

 cotton. 



cultivated by ' Fakirs ' (? Sddhus), without their having deigned to 



consider whether religious mendicants of any creed ever cultivate 

 cotton at all. Seemann says it got the name because of its being 

 used for the yellow dresses of the Buddhist priests, but he also adds 

 ' that there is no authentic specimen of G. religiosum in Linnaeus' 

 herbarium.' Both statements are most likely incorrect, for in Linn. 

 Herb, there is undoubtedly a sheet on which Linnaeus himself 

 wrote ' religiosum ' (see Plate No. 32 A). But taking the wider and 

 more probable signification, namely of plants grown near temples or 

 plants the wool of which is employed by the Brahmans, then the 

 religiosum of the Hindus would be the Deo kapas or Bam kapas 

 (G. arboreum). In modern usage, however, almost any perennial or 

 tree cotton has come to be viewed as the religious cotton, hence 

 very largely the confusion of G. brasiliense with the present plant. 

 I cannot say that I personally have ever seen a tree-cotton growing 

 near a temple in India : the statement seems to have originated 

 with Eoyle, and to have been customarily repeated without 

 verification. 



But we have to deal, not with what might be called ' the 

 religious cotton,' but with determining the plant to which Linnaeus 

 in the ' Systema Naturae ' meant to assign the name G. religiosum 

 specifically. It had leaves 3-lobed (if we exclude the synonym of 

 Plukenet which Linnaeus himself was doubtful about), and it came 

 from the Indies. By the time Linnaeus wrote the ' Systema ' we are 

 justified in thinking he had begun to describe actual plants known 

 to him (not to correlate the writings of the early botanists), hence the 

 specimen in his Herbarium (above indicated), which is, by the way, 

 not numbered in the series of the ' Species Plantarum,' may therefore 



