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Cultivation of Cotton in India. 



IX. — 0?i the Cultivation of Cotton in Inaia. — By J. M. Heath, Esq. 



In the year 1818, the attention of the Madras Government was 

 directed to the subject of the introduction of improved descriptions of 

 agricultural produce into India. At that time I held the situation of 

 Commercial Resident of Salem and Coimbatore, and instructions were 

 sent to me by the Board of Trade, to attempt to introduce the cultiva- 

 tion of Bourbon cotton into those districts. 



Being entirely unacquainted with the subject myself, I requested 

 my friend Mr. J. M. Strachan, of the house of Arbuthnot and Co., to 

 procure information forme upon the subject, from Mr. G. A. Hughes, 

 of Tinnevelly, whom I knew to have been long engaged in the cultiva" 

 tion of Bourbon cotton. 



In consequence of this application, I received the accompanying 

 paper, drawn up by Mr. Hughes, and 1 have ^reat pleasure in laying 

 it before the Committee, as it appears to me to contain more informa- 

 tion upon the cultivation of this valuable plant, than I have ever met 

 with elsewhere. 



In my endeavours to introduce the cultivation of Bourbon cotton 

 into a part of the country where it had never before been tried, I had 

 to encounter the usual difficulties which attend on the introduction of 

 any novelty in agriculture : but these difficulties gave way to perse- 

 verance, and at the end of four years, I had the satisfaction to see the 

 experiment completely successful. In the season 1823-4, I procured 

 from the district of Coimbatore, 500 bales of clean Bourbon cotton, of 

 300 lbs. each, and the natives were by that time so well satisfied that 

 the cultivation of this article was more profitable to them than that of 

 the indigenous species, that, I believe, had encouragement to the culti- 

 vation been continued, it would, by this time, have completely supersed- 

 ed that species of indigenous cotton which is cultivated in the light and 

 gravelly soil so abundant in the South of India. 



In the Madras territories, two varieties of the cotton plant are cul- 

 tivated, and they require very different soils : one is an annual plant, 

 called in Tamul, Oopum Parutti ; the other is a perennial plant call- 

 ed Nadum Parutti: the first comes to perfection only in the black 

 adhesive soil, known by the name of cotton ground, and which ap- 

 pears to be formed from the decomposition of trap rocks : the other 

 plant requires a very light loose soil, such as is formed from the dis- 

 integration of granitic rocks, and the soil appears more favourable for 



