IMPROVEMENT OF STOCKS 325 



seed, which then appeared black and naked. This was originally 

 named G, barbadense, Linn, (see p. 265) and subsequently G. vitifolium, 

 Lamk. (see p. 255). On its becoming an annual it spread north, 

 along the successive chains of islands, and seems the while to have 

 rapidly improved until, by hybridisation with G. brasiliense very 

 possibly, it assumed the condition of the finest of all known staples 

 the Sea Island of modern commerce (see pp. 275-95). The species 

 G. barbadense was largely founded on a description and figure 

 published by Plukenet, but neither his specimens (nor any of the 

 older samples in herbaria) bear the record of having come from 

 Barbados, so that it is not quite clear why it got the name barbadense. 

 Subsequent writers accepted (and perhaps naturally so) Lamarck's 

 G, vitifolium, and confessed themselves unable to recognise the 

 older Linnean plant. In another place I have given a photograph 

 of the actual original type of G. barbadense (see Plate No. 46 A), and 

 it will be seen to be very much nearer to G. vitifolium (Frontispiece) 

 than to the highly specialised modern Sea Island cotton (Plates Sea 

 Nos. 46 C, 47 and 48). It has accordingly seemed to me desirable cotton, 

 to accept Todaro's suggestion, namely to separate the Sea Island 

 cotton, which I do, as G. barbadense, Linn., var. maritima. But 

 I am by no means satisfied that there may not be one or two forma 

 commonly treated by authors as G, vitifolium, and I accordingly 

 retain Lamarck's plant as distinct from the Linnean species. 

 G. vitifolium is, moreover, often recorded as met with in a wild state, 

 and on that account its retention as a species seems desirable. 

 Botanically, however, G. barbadense, Linn., being the older name, 

 Or. vitifolium, Lamk., so far as it is at present known, should be 

 reduced to the position of a synonym under, or at most as a variety 

 of, that species. 



But from the south of the Equator there came several cottons Southern 

 two or three of which require to be here specially mentioned, such as co ons * 

 the naked-seeded Bourbon cottons (see pp. 250-5), the fuzzy-seeded 

 Peruvian cottons (see pp. 213-26) and the kidney-seeded Brazilian 

 cottons (see pp. 295-315). Lamarck, Eoxburgh, Eoyle, Wight and 

 many other botanists seem to have thought that all the so-called 

 black-seeded cottons were of necessity forms of G. barbadense, 

 hence the confusion that for long prevailed regarding the Bourbon 

 cottons (G. purpurascens). 



Far away to the south in the Windward Islands (at Tahiti) a wild 

 species abounds (G. taitense] (see pp. 246-50). This appears to have 



