THE TECHNOLOGIST. [June 1, 1865. 



502 NOTES ON EGYPTIAN AGRICULTURE. 



March, the young plants appearing a few days afterwards : the water- 

 wheel and pump then begin work, the fields being irrigated every ten or 

 twelve days, though at greater intervals when the plant is high. The 

 fellaheen are very careful of the water, and when their fields are too 

 small for a water-wheel, they will irrigate by skins or baling. In Sep- 

 tember the cotton plant is nine feet high, full of pods and beautiful 

 yellow flowers, between which time and the end of December four 

 pickings take place, the average weight gathered being 5 to 7 cwt. per 

 acre. All the boys and girls of the villages turn in to pick. The harvest 

 is ginned as soon as possible at the numerous English, French, German, 

 Italian, Maltese, Greek, Syrian, Armenian, Albanian, native, and even 

 American ginning factories, where the cotton is ginned for the seed and 

 a small sum per cantar or cwt. — in times of competition tor the seed 

 only. The cle m cotton then goes to Minet-el-Bassel, the well-known 

 cotton-market of Alexandria, where it now fetches from 91. to 12/. per 

 cwt. Tbe produce of an acre of cotton may be valued at 50?. on an 

 average, so that supposing the rent of the land, seed, cultivation, hoeing, 

 picking, irrigation, "firdeh " or land-tax of 16s. per acre, to come to 

 15Z., a very high estimate, the clear profit per acre is 35Z. — presuming 

 there are no poll tax, ship money, benevolencies, or viceregal invitations 

 to take shares in Egyptian companies, which it is not yet quite safe to 

 ignore. Many of the ginning factories above named have from 150 to 

 200 gins, with hydraulic presses for baling the cotton, oil presses for 

 extracting oil from the seed, and producing the now well-known 

 cotton-seed cake. The greatest difficulty the proprietors have is the 

 cost of labour, which is nearly as high as in England. Cotton-seed oil 

 is now largely used in the soap trade, and its refined extracts for 

 lubrification. 



The cotton shrub will bear for three years, but as the roots are very 

 strong, deep searching, and exhausting tor the soil, they are generally 

 pulled up by the end of December — the wood, which is wonderfully 

 tough, is sold for fuel, the leaves for fuel and manure ; the land is then 

 rapidly worked over for Indian corn, which is sown and harvested 

 within ninety days, or with tlax or Egyptian clover. This clover or 

 burseem is one of the fellah's best helps, and when properly irrigated 

 it may be cut fifteen times before the great heats come on — it grows as 

 high as flax. 



The camels, horses, oxen, and donkeys, goats, and sheep, are all put 

 on burseem in the spring ; its rich juices fortify and fatten them 

 wonderfully, their nature becomes renovated, and they are enabled to 

 withstand the summer heat. A good deal of burseem seed has been 

 sent to England at various times — it would be advantageous to know 

 how it has succeeded. It is possible with irrigation to obtain four 

 crops a year on the banks of the Xile— flax, Indian corn, burseem, and 

 melons. 



Of the varieties of sugar-cane, the yellow and the piirple and white, 



