108 AGRICULTURE IN THE TROPICS [PT. II 



with small projecting teeth, which tear off the cotton from the 

 seeds, the latter being left behind the mesh work. The roller 

 gin has the cotton fed between two roughened rollers, which 

 are so closely placed together that the seed is left behind, while 

 the lint or wool is drawn through. The latter type of gin gives 

 very much better results, tearing the lint much less, but is 

 more expensive to work ; it is the only type of gin that can be 

 employed for cotton with long fibres or long-stapled cotton as 

 it is technically called. 



From the gin the cotton goes to the baling press, which 

 compresses it enormously, into bales of about 500 Ibs. each, 

 which are then shipped to Japan which country takes more 

 and more of the short-stapled Indian cotton or to Europe. 



The yield of Indian cotton is astonishingly small, the quality 

 is very poor, and it is commonly more or less dirty. This is 

 due in part to the carelessness of the natives, but largely to 

 the fact that the money-lenders, to whom the villagers usually 

 mortgage their crops, do not allow them to pick it as it becomes 

 ripe, but only in quantities at intervals, and thus a good deal 

 of it falls upon the ground. The prices obtained are as a rule 

 only about 3d. or 4>d. a pound while the yield is from 60 to 

 120 Ibs. an acre. Thus the financial return is ridiculously 

 small, and in no other country but India could it be looked on 

 as a remunerative crop. The peasant, however, putting his 

 own and his family's labour into the work, and spending com- 

 paratively little in actual money upon it, regards the cotton 

 crop, in many districts, as his great financial standby. 



At one time Indian cotton held sway upon the market, and 

 there were also special manufactures of it, as, for example, into 

 Dacca muslin, in India itself, but now this is all changed, and 

 the cultivation of cotton in the United States of America has 

 revolutionised the world in this matter, and there seems little 

 prospect, for the present, of America being ousted by India from 

 her position of supremacy, though she may be largely ousted 

 by West Africa. 



Much effort is now being devoted, by the new departments 

 of agriculture in India, to getting better cottons to grow 

 successfully in that country. Experiments are being made in 



