1836.] On the Soil suitable for Cotton, Tobacco, Sugar, fyc. 483 



the wild state In the western jangles ; bat it grows in such great abund- 

 ance in the granitic soil of the Hyderabad country, as to have sometimes 

 afforded food to the inhabitants, in times of scarcity, in very dry sea- 

 sons. 



15. Ficus carica, Lin. ; Unjoor, Dak. Fig.™ Excellent figs grow in 

 various parts of this district. 



16, Ziziphus jujuba, Lin. ; Bair, Dak. — This is found in great 

 abundance in the Darwar jungles, and the fruit is sold in the bazars. 

 The Dukhuny name of the fruit has been adopted by the English in 

 India. 



X)n the Soil suitable for Cotton, Tobacco, Sugar, and the Tea plant. 



By H. PlDDINGTON.* 

 [Read at the meeting of the Agricultural Society of India, March 1836".] 



I preface what I have to say to the Society on the soils placed on the 

 table with a few remarks, which I trust may be thought worth placing 

 on record. My object in doing so is again to impress upon members of 

 what vital importance it is to the advancement of the agricultural inter- 

 ests of the country, and to the safety and success of every agricultural 

 speculation, to procure samples of all soils from other countries in 

 which valuable products grow. 



The same climate and soil are, we know, in a greater or less degree 

 the essential requisites for obtaining the production of one country in 

 another ; and for our present purpose we may perhaps say that plants 

 find their food in the soil, and are enabled to digest it by the climate. 

 They do digest, we know, and this in the strictest sense of the word. 



The popular ideas of climates are vague enough, but it may be round- 

 ly asserted, that scarcely one who uses the word knows what is really 

 meant by soil ; or rather what is really meant by " the same soil." This 

 arises from our vague notion of the thing itself. The very words used 

 to distinguish soils express, more frequently than any thing else, their 

 appearance, and some of their physical qualities ; scarcely any their 

 essential— that is their chemical properties. We talk of light and 

 heavy, of sandy and clayey, moist and dry soils, which are all physical 

 properties, and two clayey or two sandy soils may be actually as differ- 

 ent as light and darkness from each other ! The words ferruginous 

 and calcarious are, it is true, chemical terms, but such vague ones that 



* In a letter written by Dr. Wight, subsequent to the printing of his last paper on the 

 Flora of Courtallum, he expresses a regret that he was unacquainted with Mr. Pidding- 

 ton's valuable analysis of soils, when that article was composed. At Dr. Wight's sug- 

 gestion we re-publish the above, and it comes very appropriately as a sequel to Dr. 

 Christie's paper.— Editor Madras Journal, 



