SECTION IV : NAKED-SEEDED COTTONS 247 



and of G. vitifolium, and south that of G. taitense and G. Kirkii. 

 But while G. taitense has been recorded as met with (possibly only 

 acclimatised G, purpurascens) in Madagascar and the Mascarene 

 Islands (in addition to the indigenous habitat of Polynesia), G. Kirkii 

 has never, so far, been recorded as discovered outside the portion 

 of East Africa already mentioned. The value of G. taitense and its 

 immediate cultivated state (G. purpurascens) on the production of 

 some of the more highly prized staples of modern commerce, has never 

 been systematically investigated, but it would seem probable it has 

 had much to say to several forms, such as G. mexicanum, if not also 

 G. vitifolium, the other element in some of the forms being G. punc- 

 tatum, var. Jamaica. On the other hand the influence of G. brasiliense Hybrids. 

 on G. purpurascens hybrids in producing G. barbadense, var. maritima 

 seems fairly certain (see pages 254, 263, 279-81, 285-7, &c.). Every 

 historic fact that has even the most distant bearing on the naked- 

 seeded cottons would seem to point to the belief that, prior to the 

 closing decades of the seventeenth century, naked-seeded cottons 

 were little, if at all, known in the chief areas of cotton cultivation, as 

 for example in India, Egypt, and America, and when we first make 

 acquaintance with them they are found in Polynesia. 



It is also worthy of passing note that the condition of naked seed Glabrous 

 appears closely associated with naked foliage the prevailing feature 

 of the leaves of the majority of the species and races of this series 

 being glabrous or nearly so. It was this circumstance doubtless that 

 suggested the name G. glabrum, given by Lamarck in 1786, to a 

 plant which (excluding the synonyms incorrectly associated with it) 

 can be nothing more than a cultivated state of G. taitense. And it 

 may be here pointed out that Lamarck observed that he was unable F rom the 

 to decide whether to put his new plant under G. barbadense, Linn., a Antilles, 

 species of which he (like most other botanists of that period) admitted 

 having had but very imperfect knowledge. He, however, informs 

 us that G. glabrum had only lately been cultivated in the Eoyal 

 Gardens of Paris, and that the seed came from the Antilles. For very 

 nearly a century after Lamarck's time, G. 'purpurascens was viewed 

 as only a state of G. barbadense, if it was not treated as synonymous 

 with it. The French colonists carried G. purpurascens throughout 

 the world, and to that circumstance is due its having come to bear 

 the name of Bourbon Cotton. The British colonists, on the other Bourbon 

 hand, were more especially associated with the fuzzy or green-seeded cotton - 

 plant, G. hirsutum. 



