334 



WILD AND CULTIVATED COTTONS 



Two 

 naked- 

 seeded 

 cottons 

 crossed. 



First con- 

 ception of 

 Sea 

 Island. 



and a naked-seeded cotton, and it may be surmised might produce a 

 plant very much like G. peruvianum, see pp. 165-6, 190, 213, 219, &c. 

 But Eohr next gives us particulars of an actual cross that he had 

 accomplished and used. He fecundated the flowers of his ' Indian 

 cotton ' (G. purpurascens, as I take it, p. 254) with the pollen of 

 ' Brazilian cotton ' (G. brasiliense). As the result he obtained a new 

 stock of great value, the branches of which were not so straggling as 

 in the Indian and even more compact than in the Brazilian ancestor. 

 It was also a fortunate circumstance that the offspring were found to 

 mature earlier than either parent a property that we can imagine 

 may have gradually led to the production of an annual stock. The 

 leaves of the hybrid resembled mostly those of the Brazilian cotton. 

 Eohr does not tell us whether the seeds were free as in the Indian or 

 united as in the Brazilian. 



But it perhaps may be admitted that we have in Eohr's hybrid 

 (Indian x Brazilian) the first conception of the great ' Sea Island 

 Cotton,' itself a hybrid, as I suspect, between G. barbadense (or G. 

 vitifolium) and G. brasiliense (see p. 287). 



There may be some uncertainty as to Eohr's Indian cotton. It 

 had a smooth brown-black seed distinctly veined and with only an 

 imperfect tuft of velvet on one side of the beak. He saw it 

 originally in the garden of a highly intelligent native of Colombia 

 between Saint Martin and Carthagena). The wool was pure white, 

 very fine and silky, not easily soiled, but such that it could be readily 

 separated from the seed. The leaves were constantly ' convex ' 

 a description that perhaps had reference to the form and position of 

 the lobes. Lastly, the branches were long and straggling. The 

 cotton that answers best to these particulars is undoubtedly G. 

 purpurascens Bourbon cotton (see p. 250-5). 



I have repeated these particulars from Eohr's account of his 

 Cura9ao cotton to enable an opinion being formed as to the so-called 

 ' Indian cotton.' It might, of course, be one of the forms of G, viti- 

 folium, but I think it is more than likely to have been G. purpur- 

 ascens, which there seems little occasion to doubt was evolved from 

 G. taitense. We can, however, be quite certain regarding the 

 Brazilian cotton grown by Eohr and used in hybridisation it was 

 G. brasiliense. It is thus significant that 120 years ago Eohr was 

 investigating and hybridising the cottons at his plantation by methods 

 that compare favourably with the most advanced conceptions on that 

 subject at the present day. 



