Southern Mahratta Country. 57 



3. Gossypium herhaceum, Lin. ; Kupas, Duk. Cotton. 



India has been celebrated from the earliest times for her fine 

 fabrics of cotton ; and although now excelled in the manufac- 

 ture of cotton-cloths by western nations, the raw material still 

 continues to be one of her most important productions. But 

 even in the quality of the raw material, she has of late years 

 been excelled in several other countries ; and it therefore be- 

 comes an object of the first importance that the best methods of 

 cultivating and preparing the cotton should be ascertained. 

 These considerations will serve, I hope, as an apology for the 

 length of the following observations on the cotton of the Darvvar 

 district. 



The cotton in this, as well as in otiier parts of the Decan, is 

 only cultivated on the regur land ; and I am not aware whether 

 it is ever cultivated on other kinds of land, in other parts of 

 India. There is very Httle produced in Mysore, Malabar, and 

 the other parts of the Peninsula, which are to the .south of this 

 district ; and in the few places where it is met with in these 

 countries, it is found to be of an inferior quality.* Is this 

 owing to the absence of the regur or cotton ground in these 

 parts ? I am indebted for the following account of the mode of 

 cultivating cotton in the Darwar district to J. R. Stevenson, 

 Esq. subcoUector in the Southern Mahratta country : 



" The black regur land on which cotton is sown is never ma- 

 nured; but cotton crops are only raised from it once in three years. 

 If raised two years in succession, the crop of the second year is 

 always bad. In the two intervening seasons juwary t is generally 

 cultivated, and the crops of juwary produced the year after the 

 cotton are very abundant; so much so, that the Ryuts have a 

 long story of a farmer, who, when he felt himself dying, only 

 regretted that he was not spared to reap the crops of the year 

 succeeding the cotton season ; and he bitterly upbraided fate 

 for its injustice in depriving him of what he had been lookino- 

 forward to for three years. 



" The cotton seed is sown witli a drill plough, in drills about 

 ten or twelve inches asunder, in the end of August, or begin- 



• Vide Buchanan's Journey through Mysore, &c. 

 t Andropogon Sorghum. Flor. Ind. 



