4S4 



On the Soil suitable for Cotton, Tobacco, 



[Oct. 



they designate whole classes of soils, of which each sort is widely dif- 

 ferent from its neighbours. The tea soils and the Arracan tobacco 

 soils on the table are both ferruginous soils, but differing as widely as 

 soils can do ; for the iron in the one is a carbonate of iron, and in the 

 other the red oxide of iron. 



Cotton. — Nothing then but a sample of the soil and a correct analy- 

 sis of it can assure the speculator, that while he is trying to rear any 

 given foreign product, he is not (misled by loose names) absolutely 

 blundering in darkness, and attempting an impossibility. I begin with 

 Cotton as a most prominent example, though my proofs on the subject 

 are not quite so full as I could wish ; and I shall surprise the .Society 

 not a little when I say, that all the expensive efforts which have been 

 made hitherto to obtain good cotton have probably failed from this one 

 cause, that we have been at work on the wrong soil ! How far, with the 

 American cottons, differences of climate may also have operated is not 

 here the place to examine, but vegetable productions do, to a great 

 extent, acclimate themselves ; while it is probable that nothing can 

 compensate to them the want of a principal constituent of the soil. 

 Now I have not been able to obtain specimens of the American cotton 

 soils, but I have good authority for stating that the soil of the Sea 

 Islands is wholly a calcarious sand — in other words a light chalky or 

 shelly soil ; so that it may probably contain from 50 to 60 per cent, of 

 calcarious matter (lime generally in the state of chalk), and we have 

 been attempting to grow this cotton on a soil which barely contains a 

 trace of it ! The soil of the Botanic garden, for instance, not contain- 

 ing more than 11 or 2 per cent. : Indeed we may say generally, that 

 till we reach the kankur districts, none of the soils of lower Bengal, out 

 of the reach of the inundations, contain any great portion of lime. I 

 showed some years ago*, that the inundations deposit lime, and that 

 much of the fertilizing effect they produce is due to it. 



The American cotton is, then, on account of differences of climate, a 

 case not strictly in point, but the Bourbon cotton — grown both at Bour- 

 bon and the Mauritius— which sells for a shilling, when the Sea Island 

 sells for 13t/. and the Manilla cotton, which sells for lid. when the 

 Bourbon is worth a shilling, are both cottons of hot climates like our 

 own ; and both these are grown in highly calcarious soils. The soil 

 on the table before you is from the Mauritius ; it is sent me by M. 

 Geneve, of La Riviere Noire, one of the finest estates on the island, as 

 an excellent cotton soil, and contains 32 per cent, of carbonate of lime, 

 (or in plain English, one-third chalk) ; there is, moreover, phosphate 

 and perhaps not less than 40 per cent, of calcarious matter ! Its iron 

 too is in a peculiar state, that of protoxide or the black oxide of iron ; 



* Trans, of the Phys. Class, As. Soc. Vol. t 



