SECTION IV : THE VINE-LEAVED CO1TON 269 



common in Mexico, growing in warm, damp places, especially culti- Wild 

 vated, and he thus leaves the inference open that it may be wild. P lant - 

 He uses, in fact, almost the same words as Marcgraf did in connection 

 with kidney cotton. But he furnishes its vernacular name, and 

 gives an engraving which is perhaps the first illustration of a New 

 World cotton. Piso confused the Mexican plant of Ximenes and 

 Hernandez with the Brazilian of Marcgraf. 



Merian's coloured plate is a remarkably good picture, and it is Surinam 

 significant that up to the close of the eighteenth century Surinam cotton - 

 cotton was spoken of as one of the finest known grades. As already 

 stated, however, I am not quite satisfied with its being treated as a 

 synonym for G. vitifolium, the more so since recently collected 

 specimens from Surinam and that in the Linnean Herbarium as well, 

 all keep together and apart from typical G. vitifofaim. I am not 

 prepared, however, to assign them an independent position without 

 better material and more precise information, though it is possible 

 that the three mentioned may be hybrid states of G. brasiliense. 



Eochefort (' Hist. Nat. et Mor. des lies Antilles,' 1658, pp. 81-2) Antilles, 

 is perhaps the earliest writer on the cotton plants of the Antilles. 

 He describes two forms : a tree cotton called manoulou-aJcecha and a 

 procumbent plant that spreads on the ground like a vine without 

 supports. The last mentioned produces the finest cotton. 



Pere Labat (' Nov. Voy.' 1724), who explored with great care the 

 ' Isles de 1'Amerique,' gives many interesting particulars of the cotton 

 cultivation of Guadeloupe, and furnishes an engraving of the plant. 

 This shows the seeds free and naked, but the leaves as rigidly 

 5-lobed, and more like those of G. brasiliense than the present species. 

 His description, however, gives the leaves as 3-parted and ' big, Guade- 

 like those of a vine,' and thus denotes G. vitifolium sufficiently well, oupe ' 

 but it may in passing be added that the engraving does duty a little 

 later as an illustration of the cotton of Senegal (Labat, ' Nouv. Eelat. 

 de 1'Afrique Occ.,' vol. in., 262-9, pi. 262), and it may therefore have 

 been designed without any idea of specific distinctions. Labat tells 

 us that there were cultivated in Guadeloupe two chief cottons, the 

 black- and the green-seeded. Speaking of cultivation, he says the 

 ' trees ' are cut down every two or three years, and this is held to Pruned 

 improve the staple as well as the yield, since the shoots sprout freely 

 The cotton, he adds, much surpasses that of the Levant in white- 

 ness, fineness, and length. The black- seeded cotton of Guadeloupe, 

 in Labat's time, was thus a perennial. 



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