326 



WILD AND CULTIVATED COTTONS 



Bourbon 

 cottons. 



Recessive 

 form. 



Peruvian 

 and 



Mexican 

 cottons. 



Brazilian 

 cotton. 



Imported 



into 



Europe. 



originated the Bourbon cottons a group which obtained the name 

 Bourbon through the close connection of the French colonists with 

 the production and distribution of these special cottons. This 

 naked-seeded stock would appear to have contributed by hybridisa- 

 tion toward the formation of the partially naked-seeded and readily 

 separable flosses seen in some of the so-called Upland cottons of 

 America. I have repeatedly alluded to the tomentum of the leaf as 

 often showing a relationship to the character of the floss. The 

 tendency in America would seem to be toward glabrous leaves and 

 long silky readily separable floss (see pp. 194-5, 247), while in India 

 it would appear an opposite condition prevails : namely, toward 

 tomentose leaves with long silky firmly adherent floss. In the 

 former series I have presumed G. purpurascens was the recessive 

 element of the hybrid that accounted for that tendency, whereas in 

 the latter there would seem little or no doubt G. hirsutum has the 

 corresponding though opposite influence (see pp. 59, 88, 162). By 

 the exhibition of remote gametes in hybrid experiments the reappear- 

 ance of these two species should, therefore, be no unusual circumstance 

 (see p. 111). G. peruvianum and G. microcarpum are, it would seem, 

 very probably also hybrid stocks that owe their existence to the 

 presence of the fuzzy-seeded American forms spoken of as being 

 indigenous to Mexico (see pp. 204-10). The crossing of the S. 

 American naked-seeded G. vitifolium, with one or other of these 

 fuzzy -seeded plants might be anticipated as likely to afford the type 

 developed into G. peruvianum. If it be found impossible to discover 

 (in the future) an indigenous source for G. mexicanum, its origin 

 might similarly be looked for as a hybrid between G. purpurascens 

 and one of the wild fuzzy-seeded Mexican species. 



This leads me now to allude to G. brasiliense the kidney-seeded 

 cotton (see pp. 295-315). Historically there would seem little doubt 

 this came originally from Brazil, though the plant seen by Sloane in the 

 West Indies (his specimens of which are still preserved in the British 

 Museum) and which he described under the name G. brazilianum 

 (' PL Jam.') are in reality G. peruvianum. This fact thus affords the 

 earliest known date (1697) when G. peruvianum was at least known 

 and cultivated. Fully a hundred years previously, however, John 

 Lerius, in his ' History of Brazil,' described the kidney-seeded cotton 

 of that country. Prior to the discovery of Sea Island cotton (or at 

 all events to its cultivation in the Sea Islands of America), Brazilian 

 cotton was imported into Great Britain, and enjoyed the reputation of 



