ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS. 



species. The seed has not the short down which exists 

 between the longer hairs in the cultivated G. herbaceum. 



Cultivation has probably extended the area of the 

 species beyond the limits of the primitive habitation. 

 This is, I imagine, the case in the Sunda Islands and the 

 Malay Peninsula, where certain individuals appear more 

 or less wild. Kurz, 1 in his Burmese flora, mentions 

 G. herbaceum, with yellow or white cotton, as cultivated 

 and also as wild in desert places and waste ground. 



The herbaceous cotton is called kapase in Bengali, 

 kapas in Hindustani, which shows that the Sanskrit 

 word karpassi undoubtedly refers to this species. 2 It 

 was early cultivated in Bactriana, where the Greeks had 

 noticed it at the time of the expedition of Alexander. 

 Theophrastus speaks of it 8 in such a manner as to leave 

 no doubt. The tree-cotton of the Isle of Tylos, in the 

 Persian Gulf, of which he makes mention further on, 4 

 was probably also G. herbaceum; for Tylos is not far 

 from India, and in such a hot climate the herbaceous 

 cotton becomes a shrub. The introduction of a cotton 

 plant into China took place only in the ninth or tenth 

 century of our era, which shows that probably the area 

 of G. herbaceum was originally limited to the south and 

 east of India. The knowledge and perhaps the cultiva- 

 tion of the Asiatic cotton was propagated in the Grseco- 

 Roman world after the expedition of Alexander, but 

 before the first centuries of the Christian era. 5 If the 

 byssos of the Greeks was the cotton plant, as most 

 scholars think, it was cultivated at Elis, according to 

 Pausanias and Pliny ; 6 but Curtius and C. Ritter 7 con- 

 sider the word byssos as a general term for threads, 

 and that it was probably applied in this case to fine 

 linen. It is evident that the cotton was never, or very 

 rarely, cultivated by the ancients. It is so useful that 

 it would have become common if it had been introduced 



1 Knrz, Forest Flora of British Burmah, i. p. 129. 

 9 Piddington, Index. 8 Theophrastus, Hist. Plant., lib. iv. cap. 5. 



4 Ibid., lib. iv. cap. 9. 5 Bretschneider, Study and Value, etc., p. 7. 

 Pausanias, lib. v., cap. 5 ; lib. vi. cap. 26 ; Pliny, lib. xix. cap. 1. 

 See Brandes, Baumwolle, p. 96. 



T C. Hitter, Die Geographische Verbreitung der Baumwolle, p. 25. 



