212 WILD AND CULTIVATED COTTONS 



general cultivation. In fact there are remarkably few specimens of it in the 

 general Herbarium, and no examples among the selections of specimens sent 

 for my inspection from De Candolle's Herbarium, Geneva, the Cambridge 

 Herbarium, the Edinburgh Herbarium, or the Calcutta Herbarium. Mr. 

 Lawrence Balls has supplied me with one plant from Egypt that seems 

 likely to be an example, though it certainly is not pure. This is numbered 

 207-2, and seems a cross between this species and G. mexicanum. It has 

 the wool of a rusty colour, and on that account alone apparently, the name 

 Nankin cotton had been suggested for it. Mr. Broun has recently sent me 

 a specimen, under the name ' Ashmoimi Cotton,' a somewhat remarkable 

 fact, since by most writers ashmouni is said to have a naked seed. 



Thus in conclusion it may be said that, judged of by the specimens seen 

 by me, the persistence of this species in its association with Africa, in place 

 of Mexico, (the country of its supposed origin) is to say the least of it, most 

 significant. 



Nomenclature. This somewhat remarkable plant might be ac- 

 cepted as a form of G. peruvianum but for the leaves being more 

 deeply palmiparted and the seeds more or less united together in 

 kidney fashion. But that it is not G. brasiliense may be at once 

 accepted from the circumstance that the peculiarities of leaf, brac- 

 teole, flower and calyx, above narrated, are never met with except in 

 association with a velvety seed. Todaro regarded it as a Mexican 

 plant, but Spruce (I.e.) speaks of it as specially grown in the lea 

 valley of Peru; as represented in Herbaria it would appear to 

 be more especially abundant in Africa. 



Negro The prevalence of examples of this plant from Africa lends 



S negal countenance in fact to the belief that many of the cottons spoken of 

 by African travellers, who have omitted to give descriptions sufficient 

 to allow of determinations, may nevertheless have denoted this 

 plant. Thus Labat, speaking of Senegal (1728) mentions an arboreous 

 negro cotton seen by him that is not cut down in the fashion 

 mentioned in connection with Guadeloupe (see G. vitifolium) and to 

 this circumstance he thinks is due the fact that the Senegal cotton 

 is thicker, shorter and less valuable than that of Guadeloupe, and 

 resembles that of the Levant. The leaves of the Senegal plant he 

 says are softly hairy and deeply cut into five parts, like a vine, only 

 smaller. The flowers are commonly in the axils of the leaf-stalks, 

 and are pale yellow with reddish border and streaked with purple. 

 An arboreous species with yellow flowers tinged with purple, with 

 five-lobed leaves, and which bears a coarse thick wool, is a description 

 that would suit this species better than any other known to me. It 

 is therefore, very possibly, the earliest mention of the plant. 



