GOSSYPIUM 



IMPROVEMENT 

 OF STOCK 



THE COTTON PLANT 



rapidly effaced by this new phase of commercial production. It has been found 

 useless to urge that the cultivators should reserve their own supplies of seed. 

 They are too poor and too ignorant to do so, and, moreover, are only too frequently 

 in the hands of the money-lenders. (See Ginning, pp. 611-2.) 



Lastly another evil has crept gradually into the cotton traffic of India. England 

 having adapted her machinery to the steadily improving staple of the United 

 Short Staples. States, soon became unable to work up the short staples of India. But in Ger- 

 many, Japan and India itself, special factories were built with the object of 

 running for the lower-class goods and working up the world's supplies of short 

 staple. The cultivators were accordingly told that they would get no more for 

 a long than for a short staple. In every district there were both high-class 

 and low-class staples. The former gave a lower yield, compensated for by a 

 higher price. The new condition naturally dictated the universal substitution 

 of the lower grades, and an agricultural degradation in consequence was carried 

 across the country in a remarkably short space of time that may take a 

 century to efface. An official correspondence dated July, 1903, contains a letter 

 from one of the most influential European merchants of India, which puts the 

 present position tersely by narrating the advantages of the belati or jari plant 

 of the Central Provinces and Berar : (a) It is an earlier crop, thus enabling the 

 cultivator to get a quicker return ; (6) it runs accordingly less risk of injury from 

 early cold weather ; (c) it is a hardier plant, less liable to disease or to deteriora- 

 tion from rain ; (d) it gives a larger weight outturn of lint ; (e) it comes into 

 market cleaner than the other grades. 



The feature of early ripening is most important. The annual cottons of Indi<j 

 have often been spoken of as consisting of two kinds those that take eight 

 months to ripen, and those that reach maturity in about five months from sowing 

 The cottons found on a deep, moisture-retaining, black, loamy soil are of the 

 first class. They are usually grown as pure crops, and the particular race m 

 with is often remarkably uniform. The cottons of the second class occur on ligl 

 soils ; they are produced normally as mixed crops and manifest the greate 

 possible variability. The influence of rainfall, both quantity and season, is of 

 vital importance. The vicinity of Bombay town and south of the Konkan, 

 since it possesses double the rainfall of Broach, grows next to no cotton, even 

 although the soil may be highly suitable. Localities, like much of South India, 

 that have two rainy seasons possess two widely different cotton crops. It is very 

 largely in adaptation to the conditions of soil and climate that certain cottons 

 owe their superiority or the opposite. The substitution, for example, of inferior 

 for superior grades has been primarily the result of the demand for that staple, 

 but the change has to many cultivators been all the more acceptable that the plant 

 required was in their locality hardier and less risky. Some twenty to thirty 

 years ago the Central Provinces had a fair proportion of bani (superior cotton) 

 relative to its jari (or inferior cotton). To-day the crop is mainly jari. The 

 former could be spun into yarns of 20's and up even to 40's ; the latter can rarely 

 be used for more than counts up to 10's. The bani cottons were the once famed 

 Ghat cottons, such as the Hinganghat of commerce. The jari has a very short 

 staple, but is exceedingly hardy and prolific. 



As manifesting the present position of cotton and its degeneration, as also 

 some of the features of the programme of improvement that may be found 

 Dacca imperatively necessary, the following jottings regarding the famed Dacca cotton 



Cotton. may be usefully set forth : In view of the efforts presently being made to de- 



velop the industry of cotton cultivation in Bengal, it seems desirable that the 

 opinions of the earliest writers be briefly indicated. Mr. Bebb, Commercial 

 Resident of Dacca, furnished a reply to an inquiry made by the East India Com- 

 pany, and that reply is one of the earliest accounts of Dacca (in fact of Bengal) 

 cotton. It is dated 1788, and speaks of the staple as " the finest cotton in the 

 world, producing cloth of astonishing beauty and fineness." The plant is said to 

 have been an annual, and to have afforded two crops in the year, in April and 

 again in September. The first was the most esteemed and obtained the highest 

 price, but was liable to failure from long drought or from violent storms, though 

 moderate showers were highly beneficial. In the volume of Reports on Cotton, 

 Silk and Indigo published by the East India Company in 1836, there is a report 

 written by St. George Tucker in 1829 (Supply of Cotton from British India, 159-60) 

 in which he discusses the superior cotton of Dacca. He calls it bairati kupa 

 the finest variety perhaps of the Eastern cottons. It is produced only in small 

 quantity, in the districts north-west of Dacca, and is never exported. Its favourite 



594 



Advantages of 

 the Present 

 Staple. 



Maturity 

 Periods. 



Rainfall. 



Substitution. 



