200 
WANDERINGS IN CHINA. Chap. XII. 
Chinese, and differs but slightly in its structure and 
general appearance from the kind just noticed. I have 
often compared them in the cotton-fields where they 
were growing, and, although the yellow variety has a 
more stunted habit than the other, it has no characters 
which constitute a distinct species. It is merely an 
accidental variety, and, although its seeds may generally 
produce the same kind, they doubtless frequently yield 
the white variety, and vice versa. Hence specimens of 
the yellow cotton are frequently found growing amongst 
the white in the immediate vicinity of Shanghae ; and 
again a few miles northward, in fields near the city 
of Poushan on the banks of the Yang-tse-kiang, where 
the yellow cotton abounds, I have often gathered spe- 
cimens of the white variety. 
The Nanking cotton is chiefly cultivated in the level 
ground around Shanghae, where it forms the staple 
summer production of the country. This district, which 
is part of the great plain of the Yang-tse-kiang, although 
flat, is yet several feet above the level of the water in 
the rivers and canals, and is consequently much better 
fitted for cotton cultivation than those flat rice-districts 
in various parts of the country, — such, for example, as 
the plain of Ning-po, — where the ground is either wet 
and marshy, or liable at times to be completely over- 
flowed. Some fields in this district are, of course, low 
and marshy, and these are cultivated with rice instead 
of cotton, and regularly flooded by the water-wheel 
during the period of growth. Although the cotton-land 
is generally flat, so much so, indeed, that no hills can be 
seen from the tops of the houses in the city of Shanghae, 
