218 Nitrification in Egypticui Soils 



farming conditions however it would occupy not more than one-third 

 of the land. A typical farm rotation is shown in the following table 

 but many other combinations are possible. 



Table II. 

 Farm rotation typical of Lower Egypt. (Three years.) 



Cotton: March to October. 



Bersim : October to May (four cuttings). 



Maize (or Fa,llow): July to Octoljer. 



Wheat: November to June. 



Maize (or Fallow) : July to October. 



Bersim (or Fallow): November to January (one cutting). 



Maize is not always grown on all the land available, a considerable 

 proportion of the land will then be fallow from June until October as 

 a preparation for wheat or early bersim. The amount of fallow land 

 during the winter months will depend more or less on the quantity 

 of bersim required to feed the farm animals. 



So far as Egypt is concerned, no series of experiments have as yet 

 been carried out with the idea of determining the best rotation to adopt; 

 the effect on the soil of the frequent growth of cotton is not yet fully 

 understood. In this connection, two points may be noted however: 

 in the first place the yield of cotton per acre has been declining during 

 the past twenty years and the decrease is not accounted for entirely 

 by the attacks of insects like the Pink Boll Worm which has caused 

 such enormous damage in late years. Even the theory discussed by 

 W. L. Balls^ concerning the pernicious influence of a gradually rising 

 water table on the cotton crop is probably far from complete. 



In the second place, good yields of cotton can be obtained without 

 manuring. This is a fact now generally accepted by the Egyptian 

 farmer and has been well demonstrated by carefully conducted field 

 experiments. The cotton crop in Egypt at the present time is indeed 

 independent of the artificial application of fertilisers". Where definite 

 increments in yield have been obtained, the increase has been too small 

 or too uncertain to repay the cost of the manure. 



1 Phil. Trans. 1917, B. 208, 157. 



" E.g. F. Hughes, "Report on the manurial trials on Cotton carried. out during the 

 season 1908," Yearbook Khedivial Agric. Sac, 1909, 154. 



F. Hughes and H. C. Jefferys, "Manurial trials on Cotton carried out in the Stata 

 Domains, 1910," Agric. Journal Egi/pl, 1912, 1, 8. 



V. M. Mosseri, "Note preliminaire sur Ics Engrais Chiraiqucs dans la culture du 

 cotonnier en Egypte," Trans. 3rd International Congress oj Tropical .Agriculture, London, 

 1914. 



