46 HINDI COTTON IN EGYPT. 



ancient Egypt. Ancient Egj'pt depended on winter and spring crops 

 that could be grown during the intervals between the summer inun- 

 dations, but cotton requires the whole warm season, spring, summer, 

 and autumn. It has to be irrigated in. the spring before the floods 

 come and is harvested during the flood period. Cotton can be grown, 

 therefore, only on land that is protected from the floods and pro- 

 vided with canals for perennial irrigation. The only Nile mud that 

 comes to these lands is a- very little in the turbid water of the later 

 irrigations that are given to the cotton after the river rises. There 

 is no deposit of mud from large volumes of water turned into basins 

 and allowed to settle as under the old svstem of irrigation at flood 

 time. Hence there is every reason to expect a gradual decline in the 

 fertility of the cotton lands, a decline likely to be noticed first in the 

 lighter and poorer soils but. also likely to affect the others in time. 

 Whether this decline has already become a serious factor in reducing 

 yield might require a very careful investigation to determine, but 

 it is very likeh' to be- a contributing factor. 



The use of fertilizers is already recognized as a serious question 

 in relation to the cotton industr3^ As in the United States, natural 

 and artificial manures are used with pronounced benefit on the poorer 

 and lighter lands while the. heavier soils show little or no response. 

 The domestic supply of fertilizing material is greatly reduced b}' 

 the natives in their universal use of the dung of domestic animals 

 as fuel. Some writers have seen an evidence of agricultural efficiency 

 in the making of such material up into cakes and hoarding it around 

 the native houses, but the object is to cook the famih^ meals, not 

 to fertilize the land." 



A theory receiving much attention at present is that the decline of 

 the cotton crop is due to a rise of the water table or level of the 

 subsoil water in the soil, resulting from infiltration from canals and 

 the use of larger quantities of water for irrigation purposes. While 

 it is evidently true in Eg}'pt, as in the United States, that too much 

 water is bad for cotton, it hardly seems probable that the change of 

 the water table has been sufficiently serious and general to be re- 

 sjwnsible for any very large part of the decline of the crop. The 

 recent improvements of irrigation facilities are making it easy for 

 the cultivators to injure their crops b}' using too much water, a 

 tendency that seems to be very general in irrigated regions. Indica- 

 tions of such injury could often be seen in the fields. In some cases 

 continued excess of water had evidently interfered with growth, so 

 that the cotton of the water-logged fields remained very small. In 

 other cases excess of water appeared to be responsible for too vigorous 



"Foaden, G. P. Notes on Egj-ptian Agriculture. Bulletin 62, Bureau of 

 Plant Indu.stry, U, S. Dept. of Agriculture, pp. 26-33. 

 210 



