228 COTTON 



The effect of the low Nile in 1913 will probably make 

 itself felt in some parts of Northern Egypt in 1914 and 

 1915. Owing to the deficient water supply summer rice 

 cultivation is rendered impossible in the depressed and 

 badly drained parts of the Delta, where such a crop is an 

 almost imperative necessity to render the land sufficiently 

 sweet to grow cotton. The result may cause a reduction 

 of from one-half to one kantar in the cotton crop in 1915 

 from these localities, unless the situation is improved by 

 the advent of a good flood in 1914 to enable the sowing 

 of a flood crop of rice. 



It has been anticipated that the suppression of rice 

 growing in 1914 will result in an increase of the area 

 under cotton; but it seems scarcely likely that those lands 

 which in the ordinary course require a land-washing* crop 

 this year would be in a sufficiently good condition to 

 produce a cotton crop. 



The stability of the economic position in Egypt and 

 of Egyptian investments is often said to be depreciated 

 by the fact that the country is given up to the cultivation 

 of cotton as its sole exported crop, yet it is surely a 

 sound procedure to cultivate to the utmost cotton which 

 can command a price above that of the product grown in 

 almost any other country, at least until such a time as a 

 similarly good quality can be brought into serious com- 

 petition with it. That there should be any increasing 

 deterioration in the quality of the cotton produced in the 

 future is highly improbable. In a century of cotton 

 growing, during which no organized general effort has 

 been made to preserve the quality, the latter has pre- 

 served itself in a marked degree; much less, therefore, 

 at the present time, when every opportunity is being 

 taken to improve the fibre and the yield by the best 

 known methods, should there be fear of increased or 

 permanent deterioration. 



No other crop which has been tried in Egypt gives 

 quite such a highly remunerative yield as cotton at 

 present; but should the unexpected occur, and, through 

 any unforeseen cause, should there be a great diminution 

 of yield per feddan or serious fall in price, a moderate 

 substitute might be found in wheat, rice, maize, sugar, 



