THE TECHNOLOGIST. [Jan. I, 1865. 



248 ON THE COTTON PLANT. 



it be ; for, in hunting among the books, religiosum is generally found to 

 be something else, and something else to be religiosum. It has broader 

 lobed leaves than the common sorts, tinged and veined with brownish 

 pink, and bears very decidedly green seeds. I have raised it from a 

 sample sent me, under that name, by the Cotton Supply Association ; 

 and also mixed with the sort called " oopuni," from the same source. The 

 "oopum " plant I have retained at home, in hopes of ripening the one 

 sing! e late-set pod which it produced. Very like it, with the same green 

 seeds, but with more acute and numerously-divided lobes, is the very 

 interesting species arboreum. I assume it to be such, upon the authority 

 of the Botanic Garden of Saharunpore, associated as the name is 

 with Royle and cotton. My plants were raised from seed received from 

 thence through my friend Mr. Arthur Grote, of the Asiatic Society at 

 Calcutta. Now this arboreum was, on many accounts, a desideratum — 

 desideratissimum. For years it eluded my search with the cunning of a 

 fox. I was once fond of fox-hunting, and could hold my own across a 

 country as. well as my neighbours ; but of all the foxes to hunt, for 

 intense excitement, there is nothing like a scientific fox. I first "put 

 up " the arboreum fox in the covers of my old friend Tenore, at Naples, 

 kept it for years, and never could do anything with it, as it always 

 showed for bloom in November, and went leafless to rest in December. 

 Again I got the same plant from Chiswick, but now under the name of 

 South Sea Island. I have it now just tr)ing to ripen a pod. It is the 

 acclimatised Bourbon of India. So for ten years I was " running hare." 

 I then took to books, botanic gardens, and friends in the tropics. Tro- 

 pical friends sent big Bombaxes, and the eternal Bourbon again, with a 

 sprinkling of acuminatum. Botanic gardens were out of the question, as 

 they always stuck religiously to the label the captain in the navy, 

 collector of customs, or consul's wife sent with the seed. Books were 

 worse than botanic gardens, as almost every writer has a pet arboreum of 

 his own. Now, for popular and general information, every Brahmin, 

 you must know, wears a hank of cotton of three threads round his neck 

 for religious motives, and this arboreum, a plant nearly resembling the 

 ordinary Indian cotton in all respects, except in bearing a red flower, 

 and being a decided perennial, is known to be cultivated in the gardens 

 of priests and fakirs, and in the precincts of temples, for the purpose of 

 furnishing the mystic threads. But travellers say that the large kidney 

 cotton plant is used for the same purpose ; and we read that tinnseus 

 named another sort religiosum, as being a cotton tree under the shade 

 of which religious ceremonies were performed, and which furnished 

 the sacred threads. It was afterwards said that this tree was simply a 

 Bombax. Here I was running four foxes at once. Finally, 1 ran into 

 my fox in Boyle's " Illustrations." Here it is ; it answers pretty well to 

 ftoyle's figure which I now exhibit. It has not yet flowered. It 

 closely resembles religiosum in the tinted foliage and green seeds. From 

 a sample of Kupas, or seed with the wool on it, labelled " Good native 



