376 
COMMENTARY ON 
Utta Pela seu Sajor Bagnala, p. 194, t. 79, I 2. 
Linnaeus confounded this with two American plants of 
the same genus, which Plumier called Plukenetia. These 
Were finally separated by Smith, and the plant of Rumphius 
is now called Plukenetia corniculata (Willd, Sp. PI. iv. 515 ; 
* Enc. Meth. Sup. v. 20). 
Caput LXVII. 
Eriophoros Javana, p. 195, t. 80. 
Pliny mentions two different plants that contain in their 
fruit a wool fit for clothing. The one (lib. xii, cap. 10, 11) 
he calls Arhov gossampinus, the other he calls (lib. xix, 
cap. 1) Frutex gossipion, forming thus two natural genera; 
and as botanists have usually written in Latin, they should 
have preserved the names thus judiciously given by their 
Roman precursor. I agree with Rumphius in thinking 
that the Arbores Gossampini include the 'Finophorosjava- 
nica and several kindred species ; while the Gossipion in- 
cludes the plants now in more common use for producing 
cotton- wool. 
The older botanists, such as C. Bauhin and Plukenet, 
considered all the plants producing cotton-wool as forming 
one genus, and preferred the name Gossipion ; probably, 
however, judging themselves better Latinists than the Ro- 
man Consul, they changed this name into Gossypium, 
to which orthography their successors carefully adhere. 
Tournefort rejects the name altogether, and prefers Xylon, 
which indeed Pliny mentions as being a more common 
name than Gossipion, for the shrub bearing wool; and so 
far, therefore, the French botanist was entirely justifiable ; 
and so might even the older botanists be held, who, con- 
sidering all the wool-bearing trees as belonging to one ge- 
nus, gave the classical name Gossypium to the whole. 
