CHINESE AND JAPANESE COTTONS 



GOSSYPIUM 



NANKING 



Slam Cotton 

 ' ih varadi cotton \,, t mi^ht be said to have been Prollflo 



--.jularly I'hrimirlfd t'niiii di-l rid t.> district an<l ImiUxi M l^w-gnde. 

 a treasure l>\ tin- u<l\rats "i I 'vv-gnulo cottons, while viewed an a calamity 



Muldlcton says : " White (lowered cotton is a dangerous ri\. 

 .rieties. l<\ nature ii is made, t.. supplant. When brought to a 

 u-n-t. in-ii-.nl of pining as moat exiled cottons do, it develops all its best 

 ;!;'; '.. irmw.s robust, matures early, is prolific and so wins the favour of 

 ill-- cultivators ; once established, it begins to degenerate, joins company with 

 t In- \\nrst of t In- nat ivo varieties, and forms the mixed growths that constitute the 

 l>ulk of tho ' Bengal*' of commerce." 



most curious that the name vilayati, often given to this as also to other Hybrid 

 ' MOM "i ''. uar. ttrgirrta, should have begun to be used in *nt to India. 

 Khimdosh and Borar about the very time that the record exists of Major Trevor 

 t'larko having supplied seed of a cross he had effected between the Garo hills 

 cut tun and Elinganghat. It is thus fairly certain that one of the first serious 

 t'ffortH to improve the Indian stock gave to the cotton growers of that country 

 their most prolific though most inferior staple-yielding plant. 



I 



G. Nanking 1 , Meyen, Reise, 1836, ii., 323 ; Verh. der Gartenb. der 

 Preuss. Stoat., xi., 258, t. 3 ; Watt, I.e. 114-24, 1. 15 ; G. Capos, Rumphius, 

 Herb. Amb., 1750, iv., 33-7, t. 12 ; G. indicum, LamL, Encyd., 1786, ii., 

 134 ; G. herbaceum, Roxb., Fl. Ind., 1832, iii., 184-5 (var. China Cotton) ; 

 (1. herbaceum, Parl., Sp. Cot., 32 (in part) ; G. Nanking and G. indicum, 

 Todaro, Relaz. Cult, dei Cot., 147-52, t. iii., f. 1 ; G. herbaceum, var. lana 

 rufa, Aliotta, Riv. Crit. Gen. Goss., 1903, 71. The Siam, Chinese and 

 Japanese Cottons of commerce. 



Habitat. An annual or perennial bush with delicately formed and often 

 purple-coloured twigs ; cultivated in China, Japan, the Malaya, Siam, Burma, 

 India, the North-West Himalaya, Persia, Central Asia, Celebes, Upper Egypt 

 and Africa (doubtfully in Madagascar and Arabia). No person has recorded the 

 discovery of the wild state of this protean species, and yet its specific character- 

 istics are so constant with many of the cottons, within a large part of the areas 

 indicated, that the separation of the assemblage, from G. herbarium, a. r- 

 borrnm, and <'. obt ntti/aii m . not only meets a commercial necessity but coincides 

 with many historic facts of importance. 



Trigault (1615) says that cotton grows in great abundance but is not in- 

 digenous to China, in fact was introduced (? from Egypt) about four hundred 

 years before his time. Dampier (Voyages, 1691) speaks of having seen a 

 small cotton plant on an island near Formosa. One of the most interesting 

 of the early writers on Chinese Cotton may be said to be Barrow (Travels in 

 China, 1806 (2nd ed.), 556-7, 560). He tells us that the beautiful coloured cotton, 

 known in commerce by the name of the chief city Nanking, was exported, tho 

 Chinese purchasing in exchange the cheaper white cottons of Bengal and Bombay. 

 It was, he remarks, planted in rows and grew for three years, thereafter being 

 uprooted and the fields prepared for other crops. Fortune (Three Years' Wander- 

 ings in China, 1847, 264) explains that the kakhi or Nanking cotton was a mere 

 sport from the common white cotton of China. 



Economically <s. Xnniitna is, at the present day, doubtless much more 

 valuable than uar. nan<juim-H or any of the other G. r&o-rim forms. More- 

 over, some of the . Xanking series display characters of far greater interest 

 than the mere length of the corolla (which Todaro lays stress on), and they might, 

 in fact, be broken up into several varieties or distinctive races. Thus, for ex- 

 ample, Bretschneider's specimen has the seeds black and almost devoid of 

 an under-velvet a character which brings to mind the naked black-seeded 

 so-called indigenous cottons of South India (see below), but it is highly probable 

 that both these may have to 'be regarded as indicating hybridisation with 

 one of the naked-seeded forms. So again, some of the Indian examples of this 

 species have purple flowers, others yellow with purple blotches, and in still 

 others the flowers are pale yellow with a purple tinge on the extremities of the 

 petals. A range of variability such as that can be best accounted for on tho 

 assumption that the assemblage embraces many cultivated races, of which each 

 very possibly owes its peculiarities largely to hybridisation. 



Cultivated Forma. It would be rash to affirm (in the present state of know- 



579 



D.E.P., 

 iv., 29. 

 Chinese 

 Cotton. 



Early 

 Records. 



BMM, 



Hybrids. 



