April 1908. J 



361 



Miscellaneous, 



INDIAN AGRICULTURE. 



By Henry Staveley Lawrence, i.c.s., 

 Director of Agriculture, Bombay. 

 (Concluded from p. 235. ) 



Cotton. 



To turn once more to cotton. The sta- 

 tistics tell us that if we include Native 

 States, cotton covers an area of 20 million 

 acres, and produces about 4 million bales, 

 of an approximate value of £30 millions. 

 Very little of this comes to Egland, 

 (about 100,000 bales, worth £| million); and 

 since the whole of the rest of the British 

 Empire produces less than 20,000 bales, 

 Lancashire pays some £52 million ster- 

 ling annually to foreign couutries for its 

 supplies. 



There are bold men who assert that it 

 is proved by the Indian hand-loom 

 weavers of Dacca that Indian lint is 

 capable to-day of weaving the finest 

 qualities of cloth— and this not from a 

 vanished species of tree cotton as an 

 exploded myth used to declare, but from 

 the ordinary coarse Bengal staple— and 

 that great discoveries are yet possible 

 in the region of electricity and humidity 

 to adapt modern machinery to the use of 

 short staples. Certain it is that during 

 the American Civil War, when Lan- 

 cashire was starving for the want of 6 

 million cwt. of American cotton, India 

 came to the rescue and succeeded in 

 increasing the exports to Lancashire by 

 5 million cwt, 



Bombay, the Central Provinces, and 

 Berar contain three-fourths of the 

 cotton area. The better classes of cotton 

 require a longer period of growth than 

 the brief seasons of rainfall in India 

 permit. Except where the soils are 

 extraordinarily retentive of moisture, 

 length of staple depends cheifly on tiie 

 dates when the monsoon begins and 

 ends. Thus the Khandesh cottons which 

 are sown in June and harvested in 

 October have a staple of about 

 half-an-inch ; the cottons in Broach and 

 Dharwar sown in September and har- 

 vested in March, have a staple of three- 

 f ourtns of an inch, and are 30 per cent, 

 more valuable, 



The failure of the constant efforts to 

 introduce American and Egyptian 

 varieties, which flourish most favour- 

 ably with a season of growth extending 

 up to eight months, resulted in most 

 cases from the want of sufficient mois- 

 ture in the soil for this length of time. 

 In Upper India a further difficulty was 

 added in the injury caused by the 

 frosts, which are liable to occur in 

 December and January. Thus in that 

 region nature appears to demand that 

 16 



these plants, if grown at all, shall be 

 grown between February and November. 



This important conclusion was grasp- 

 ed by an officer of the Bombay Depart- 

 ment of Agriculture who had studied 

 the cultivation ot Egyptian cotton in 

 Egypt, and has led to the successful in- 

 troduction of this valuable variety into 

 Sind, 



Sind closely resembles Egypt in almost 

 every point. It is practically rainless, 

 and derives its life from the Indus as 

 Egypt from the Nile ; in area of 

 cultivation it is rapidly increasing, and 

 may before long rival Egypt. Until 

 recently all cultivation has depended on 

 the inundation canals, which fill with 

 water only when the snows in the 

 Himalayas begin to melt in May, and 

 which dry up with the cessation of the 

 flood in October. With this brief season 

 the Sindhi peasant has been compelled 

 to grow a cotton which comes rapidly 

 to maturity and necessarily posssess a 

 short staple. Within the last few years 

 the skill of the engineer has supplied 

 two of the chief canals in Sind with a 

 perennial flow of water, and has re- 

 volutionised the agricultural conditions 

 on 700,000 acres, or one-fifth of the pro- 

 vince ; and yet more magnificent pro- 

 jects are under consideration. 



In March, 1901, the department plant- 

 ed 20 acres of Egyptain cotton, and in 

 November obtained an excellent yield 

 both in out-turn and quality. In 1905, 

 500 bales were produced by native land- 

 holders ; in 1906 and 1907 this quantity 

 was doubled. The experiment has been 

 seriously checked by an unprecedented 

 attack of boll- worm, which damaged the 

 indigenous and exotic varieties alike ; 

 and by the conscientious objection of the 

 Sindhi cultivator to apply the greater 

 amount of labour that is necessary to the 

 cultivation of the superior fibre. But 

 a confident expectation is entertained 

 that eventually Sind will produce 100,000 

 bales of almost the finest cotton in 

 the world, worth at least twice as much 

 as the indigenous variety. 



The Western Punjab is closely allied 

 to Sind, and if success attends the 

 efforts that are in progress to accli- 

 matise Egyptian and American varieties 

 there, the irrigation colonies offer a 

 vast field for their cultivation. But in 

 addition to the substitution of superior 

 varieties for inferior in these exceptional 

 cases, there is much useful work to be 

 done in various directions. 



In some tracts, as in Berar, where 

 cotton cultivation is increasing rapidly, 

 and the people have little agricultural 

 skill, demonstrations of the advantages 



