CH. X] FIBRE-YIELDING PLANTS 107 



more of the local product. As these mills do not want a long 

 but simply a short and uniform staple, the process of improve- 

 ment of the quality of Indian cottons is naturally handicapped. 

 What is most wanted at present would seem to be a larger 

 yield, for the production is extremely small. 



In the 18th century cotton was often grown under irrigation 

 in India, but during more recent times it has commonly been 

 cultivated on lands of good water- retaining capacity. The 

 most marked of these is the "black cotton soil" common in 

 Madras, Berar, etc. This is a heavy black alluvial soil, rather 

 clayey, which cracks, but does not disintegrate, under a hot 

 sun, and retains water exceedingly well. Experiments in 

 Ceylon with similar soils tend to show that this black soil 

 offers no special advantages other than this capacity of holding 

 water, a capacity which must be of great value under an Indian 

 sun. 



The cotton crop in India is commonly rotated with others ; 

 e.g. in Berar a common sequence is wheat, peas, cotton, linseed, 

 jowari. It is also not infrequently sown with a small admixture 

 of some leguminous crop. 



Indian cotton, speaking generally, is about the poorest and 

 dirtiest, and gives the worst yield, of any in the world, and no 

 one who has seen the cotton districts of India can wonder at 

 this. It is a small, low-growing plant, usually not over three 

 feet high. In some parts of India it is sown broadcast, in 

 others planted with a drill, at intervals of 1' 6" to 3' apart, and 

 the crop is put out every year at the beginning of the rainy 

 season. It is kept weeded, but otherwise left to take care of 

 itself, and in a few months it comes into flower, the flowers 

 being succeeded by the pods, or bolls, as they are usually termed. 

 From these, when they burst, the cotton is picked, spread out 

 to dry, and finally ginned. Formerly it was largely ginned by 

 the aid of small and very primitive hand-gins, but now it is 

 often ginned at special factories, established by European firms 

 throughout the cotton districts. 



Two kinds of gin are generally employed, the saw gin and 

 the roller gin. In the former the cotton is fed against a grating 

 of fine mesh work, behind which is a revolving drum covered 



