CAUSES OF DETERIORATION. 45 



OTHER CAUSES OF DETERIORATION OF THE EGYPTIAN CROP. 



WTiile an increase of the proportion of Hindi cotton would explain 

 a reduction in the yield as well as in the quality of the crop, it is 

 probable that other causes are responsible for a share in the decline. 

 Indeed, some writers on the subject, overlooking the Hindi factor, 

 have used considerable ingenuity in imaoining other causes of dete- 

 rioration and are caHing for radical measures of reform to check, if 

 possible, the downward tendencies. Statistics indicate a general 

 tlecline in production at the rate of about 100 pounds of lint per acre 

 during a period of about 1'2 yeai^. Such a reduction is a very 

 serious matter from the standpoint of the native cultivator who 

 operates on a very small piece of land at a very high rental. Even 

 when the tenant has to pump his own irrigation water his rent may 

 run at the rate of $40 or $50 per acre. Under favorable conditions 

 a return of $100 may be secured, 1)ut the margin is often very nar- 

 row, only $5 to $10 for a season's work. 



In spite of the decline in yield, the increase of the area of produc- 

 tion by new irrigation works may maintain or even increase the 

 total output of the country as a whole, though it is evident both in 

 Lower and Upper Egypt that the extension of cotton into newly 

 ]-eclaimed areas is likely to be a very gradual process attended by 

 considerable difficulties. Other possibilities of extensive cotton pro- 

 duction are said to exist in the Egyptian Sudan, where many efforts 

 for agricultural progress, including large projects in irrigation, are 

 now being made. 



One of the favorite theories to account for tlie lessening yields of 

 cotton is that the varieties have run out. This theory may be true 

 in the sense already discussed, that of deterioration due to hybridism 

 and resulting diversity, but it is probably not true in the sense that 

 is commonly supposed, that the varieties have weakened and declined 

 in vigor and fertility. With plants long propagated from cuttings, 

 such as strawberries and potatoes, it is believed that old varieties 

 become weaker and less resistant to disease after a period of a few 

 decades, but with open-fertilized, seed-propagated plants like the 

 cotton, the idea of varieties running out is not considered as having 

 received any adequate demonstration. Some of the native cultiva- 

 tors declare that all the plants used to grow as large on their land as 

 the tall hybrids do now and that they were fertile in proportion to 

 their size, but such a difference might be due to a decline in the 

 fertility of the soil as well as to a deterioration of the variety. 



kThe tradition of perpetual fertility of the Egyptian soil, an- 

 nually renewed by the sediment deposited by the flood of the Nile, 

 does not apply to the cotton lands, for this crop is raised on an en- 

 tirely different system having no relation to the agriculture of 

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