Malvacee.] THE HIMALAYAN MOUNTAINS. 93 
owing to a less-productive species being employed, of which the produce is only one- 
half the weight per acre, the expenses are said to be as high as sevenpence a-pound. 
In comparing the careful culture of America with that which is practised in India, we 
shall find it, as truly stated by Mr. Crawford, no where considered as a matter of 
primary importance, but made secondary to rice, wheat, and grain generally; and, [| 
may add, that I have never observed any care bestowed on the selection or exchange of 
seed, the preparation of the soil, or the growth of the plant, and, least of all, in the 
collection of the produce; being in its earlier periods grown with some other crop, and 
in the later overgrown with weeds, while the picking does not take place until the 
leaves are so brittle, that it is impossible to prevent them mixing with the cotton. 
Mr. Colebrooke mentions that a fine sort of cotton is grown in the eastern districts of 
Bengal for the most delicate manufactures ; and that a coarse kind is gathered in every 
part of the province, from plants thinly interspersed in fields of pulse or grain. Captain 
Jenkins describes the cotton in Cachar as gathered from the Jaum cultivation: this 
consists in the jungle being burnt down after periods of four to six years, the ground 
roughly hoed, and the seeds sown without further culture. But the fullest account 
of the mode of cultivation in India, is that by Dr. Buchanan Hamilton, in his 
statistical account of Dinagepore, where we are informed that some cotton’ of bad 
quality is grown along with turmeric, and some by itself, which is sown in the beginning 
of May, and the produce collected from the middle of August to the middle of October, 
but the cultivation is miserable. A much better method, however, he adds; is practised 
in the south-east parts of the district, of which the cotton is finer than that imported 
from the west of India; the land is of the first quality, and the cotton is made to’succeed 
rice, which is cut between the middle of August and the middle of September ; the 
field is immediately ploughed until well broken, for which purpose it may require six 
double ploughings. | After one-half of these has been given, it is manured with dung or 
mud from ditches. Between the middle of October and the same time of November, 
the seed is sown broad cast ; twenty measures of cotton, and one of mustard. That of 
the cotton, before it is sown, is put'in water for one-third of an hour ; after which, it is 
rubbed up with a little dry earth to facilitate the sowing ; a month afterwards the field 
is weeded. About the beginning of February the mustard is ripe, when it is plucked, 
and the field weeded. Between the 12th of April and the 12th of June, the cotton is 
collected as it ripens. The produce of an acre’ is about 300Ibs. of cotton, worth’ ten 
rupées, and as much mustard-seed, worth three rupees. A still greater quantity of 
cotton, Dr. B. continues, is reared on stiff clay land, where the ground: is also high, 
and tanks numerous. If the soil is rich, it gives a summer crop of rice’ in the same 
year, or, at least, produces the seedling rice that is to be ‘transplanted.’ In’ the 
beginning of October the field is ploughed, and in the end of the month the cotton-seed 
is sown, mingled with sorisha or tora (species of Sinapis ‘and Eruca), and some> rows 
of flax and safflower ‘are generally intermixed.’ About the end of January, or later, 
: the 
