SECTION III: G. PERUVIANUM 217 



also collected Ahmedabad, n. 1734, and Gondal, n. 1814. In M. de Candolle's 

 Herbarium, Geneva, there are in addition to duplicates of some of the above 

 mentioned plants samples collected by Zollinger in Java, 1857. In the 

 Florence Herbarium there is a series of specimens named by Parlatore as 

 G. barbadense, Linn., which I feel fairly certain are G. peruvianum, Cav. 

 One label bears a note to the effect that the plant was raised from seed 

 received from Brazil. 



Nomenclature. This somewhat obscure species might be said to 

 link together G. mexicanum and G. brasiliense. It has the palmi- 

 sected foliage of the latter with the blistering habit of the twigs and 

 the fuzz-coated seeds of the former. A somewhat parallel association 

 may be viewed as accomplished by the palmatifid G. hirsutum 

 through G. mtifolium to G. brasiliense, indeed all the earlier her- 

 barium samples marked Egyptian Cottons are forms of G. hirsutum 

 rather than of G. peruvianum (see p. 185). 



It is significant that all the American and African cultivated 



S 66 (led 



cottons that possess seeds more or less coated with velvet (e.g. G. cottons. 

 hirsutum, G. mexicanum and G. peruvianum) have the leaves pilose, 

 while the forms with sub-glabrous leaves (G. purpurascens, G. 

 mtifolium and G, brasiliense) have the seeds naked (e.g. not pos- 

 sessed of a velvet coating beneath the floss), but in G. purpurascens and 

 G. mtifolium the seeds are free from each other, and in G. brasiliense 

 they are united into, kidney-shaped masses. 



G. microcarpum might in the same way be spoken of as a 

 transitional form between these two sets. Its leaves are usually 

 even more deeply palmisected than in G. brasiliense, and at the 

 same time they are pilose-tomentose, while the seeds are semi- 

 conglomerated and partially coated with fuzz. 



These and a few other plants have (and perhaps naturally so) 

 been much confused by writers on this subject. 



CULTIVATION 



CENTRAL AND SOUTH AMERICA. Few writers have discussed the 

 special properties of this species from the industrial standpoint. 

 Most have contented themselves with furnishing particulars of the 

 South American cottons collectively or of the Brazilian or Peruvian Peruvian 

 cottons as a whole. Spruce, who studied the cotton cultivation 

 during the time of the great cotton famine, and published in 1864 

 his little book on ' The Cultivation of Cotton in the Piura and Chira 

 Valleys of Northern Peru,' devoted special attention to the individual 

 merits of the cottons seen by him, from the belief that there might 



