June 1, 1885.] THE TECHNOLOGIST. 



NOTES ON EGYPTIAN AGRICULTURE. 499 



all the railway employes to get the line in working order within a certain 

 time ; the drowned cotton was dragged up, and the land replanted with 

 flax, Indian corn, wheat, and burseem, or Indian clover ; and as no 

 draught animals were forthcoming, large orders were given to Howard 

 and Fowler for steam ploughs. 



In these brief notes, modern agricultural Egypt will be described 

 under the four following heads : — 1. The Soil ; 2. The Produce ; 3. The 

 Animals ; 4. The Men. 



1. Soil. — The arable land all over Egypt is for the most part loam, 

 entirely free from stone, with a heavy clay subsoil, the latter strongly 

 impregnated with salt ; yet in some parts, for instance Shoubra, belong- 

 ing to His Highness Halim Pasha, the whole soil is a heavy clay, and 

 makes very superior bricks. 



It is generally supposed that the water from the Nile during its rise 

 deposits the rich fertilising mud wherever it flows : this is far from the 

 case. It is only for a short distance on each side of the banks that the 

 deposit takes place, and the rent of land there is exceedingly high com- 

 pared to that at a greater distance ; the water conveyed by canalisation 

 to the lands of the Delta is perfectly limpid, and merely used for simple 

 irrigation. It is only on the immediate banks of the Nile that the 

 fellah may be seen when the waters recede, wading up to his armpits, 

 sowing his seed broadcast on the ooze, casting his bread upon the waters 

 which he will find after many days. It is frequently supposed that the 

 land is inexhaustibly fertile ; it is not so', however, as has been pimply 

 demonstrated by the liberal-minded prince and agriculturist before 

 named, who planted two fields side by side with flax, the one dressed 

 with superphosphate, the other left without manure. It is no exaggera- 

 tion to say that the flax treated with the manure, grown under the super- 

 intendence of His Highness's English gardener, Mr. William Chapman, 

 had double the thickness of stalk and was nearly double the height of 

 the other ; in fact, the difference between the two samples was as strik- 

 ing as anything could be. This enlightened prince has since ordered 

 three hundred tons of guano and superphosphate for his different estates 

 in Egypt. 



The fellaheen are also alive to the value of manure, and spread on 

 their fields dust from old ruins abounding in the Delta, which contain a 

 great deal of lime. The dung of the camels, oxen, buffaloes, horses, and 

 donkeys is collected by the women and children, who compress it with 

 their hands into a bun-like shape, and stick it on the walls of their 

 huts, where it dries and is used for fuel, there being little wood and no 

 coal or lignite in the country. The land is broken up to a depth of 

 about three inches with the Egyptian plough, partly from the want of 

 proper implements to go deeper, partly for fear of bringing up the salt 

 subsoil. The Egyptian plough is like that used in India, Spain, and 

 Portugal, a mere iron point or pick adapted to a wooden framework, 

 which scratches up the land as a one-tined scarifier would do, so that to 



