THE TECHNOLOGIST. [Jan. 1, 1865. 



244 ON THE COTTON PLANT. 



who could describe them from living specimens ; and I believe our own 

 Lindley is of much the same opinion. The distinguished botanist and 

 traveller, Dr. Welwitsch, adds another undoubted wild species, G. micro- 

 carpum, Welw., from the district of Mossamede, near Loanda, in Western 

 Africa. I shall have the gratification of being able to show you a 

 specimen by-and-by, of this very curious plant, which I shall always be 

 proud of as a present from the discoverer of Welwitschia mirabilis. 



I need not say that the popular accounts of the plant present an 

 amount of error and confusion past all understanding. But there is 

 reason and excuse for all this. Cotton is a domesticated plant, and has 

 been so through unknown ages, in every part of the world where the 

 climate would bring it to perfection. What the caninse are to the zoolo- 

 gist, fowls and pigeons to the ornithologist, cereal grain, potatoes, pinks, 

 and polyanthuses to the farmer, gardener, and florist, this has cotton been 

 to the botanist. Naturalists know that no two reproductions of animal 

 or vegetable life are exactly alike. However slight it may be, each has 

 an individuality, more or less visibly stamped upon it. This disposition 

 to sport, as it is termed, is enormously increased by cultivation, by which 

 I mean, rich food and immunity from disturbing influences. 



Upon any plant weeded, watered and manured, fenced in and fos- 

 tered by the hand of man, Nature rings her weird changes with un- 

 bridled energy, and in no case more curiously than in the genus 

 Gossypium. What are or were the countless Gossypium legionaries, 

 uplands and lowlands, Sea islands, and Bourbons, long staples and short 

 staples, with the botanical hirsutums, gldbrums, vitifoiiums,tmd latifoliums 

 of the West ? What the albums, nigrums, rubrums, and purpureums, pal- 

 matums and tricuspidatums of the Eastern world 1 They are mastiffs,, 

 greyhounds, pointers, setters, pugs, poodles, and turnspits, Taylor's- 

 bright Venuses and Buck's George the Fourth's, white Talavera and 

 brown Lammas, beautiful man-made monsters, fair to the eye and good 

 for food and raiment and other wants of the world, but inscrutable as to 

 their origin and a stumbling-block to systematism ? 



But it is time to get to work. — Loquitur Boyle. 



The genus Gossypium is distinguished, that is from other mallow- 

 worts, by having a double calyx, or iu other words a simple calyx sup- 

 ported externally by three leaf-like bracts, forming an involucre, and a 

 three to five-celled capsule, with seeds immersed in the wool-like sub- 

 stance, so well known by the name of cotton. Time compels me to 

 refer you to Boyle or other reliable botanists for the general description. 



Slight as are the real specific distinctions, in the strict scientific 

 sense of the word there is an outward physiognomic difference between 

 at least two great and important races of the plant, to wit, those of the 

 American and those of the Asiatic continent, which no person, however 

 slightly acquainted with plants, can fail to observe. And this outward 

 appearance is accompanied by an equally great and important difference 

 in the commercial product We will first take, the American forms. 



