1837.] 



Remarks on the Cultivation of Cotton. 



81 



annual into biennial, or perennial, shrubs,* if the hardening and 

 cracking of the black clay soils in which they are grown do not 

 prevent by too severely injuring the roots. But I rather think the 

 annual character is mainly attributable to the stems being left vegetat- 

 ing after the crop is gathered, by which the strength of the root being 

 exhausted through the constant and severe drain at the time it should 

 be allowed to rest, it is no longer capable, on change of season, of pro- 

 ducing a remunerating return, and is consequently extirpated to make 

 way for a more profitable employment of the ground. 



As in the cultivation of cotton the broadcast method of sowing is 

 radically bad, advantage should be taken of the introduction of a new 

 kind, to establish with respect to it, at whatever cost, drill husbandry, 

 for if found advantageous, it will extend to the original country variety 

 (which from the soil it affects can never be entirely superseded) and 

 might be the means of enlarging and improving the produce. With 

 this view the seeds should be sown in shallow furrows about 4 feet 

 apart, and the plants afterwards thinned out to two or three feet distance 

 from each other, according to the fertility of the soil and probable size 

 of the bushes. Many advantages would result, the ground could be 

 easily hoed and kept clean, and the crop gathered without injuring the 

 bushes. If, as the natives almost invariably do, light crops are sown 

 in the same field, they, by being also sown in rows, could be easily kept 

 from injuring the cotton plants, either during their growth or while 

 reaping them. The bushes would have room to grow to their full size, 

 and produce individually much more cotton with less exhaustion to 

 the soil. When well grown, say from two to three feet high, the ends of 

 the branches should be lopped. This operation, by checking vegetati- 

 on for a few days and allowing the plants some rest and time to harden 

 their young wood, will be followed by a copious supply of new shoots, 

 and, as they alone bear flowers, a greatly augmented crop. After 

 the crop is gathered, vegetation should as much as possible be checked. 

 The easiest way to effect this is to strip the bushes of their leaves, by 

 eating them down with sheep or cattle, by which the ground is at the 

 same time manured, and then cut down the stumps almost to the 

 ground in imitation of the Persian method. The roots are thus saved 

 from the exhausting efforts they otherwise make to support vegetation 

 in the stem during an unfavourable season, after the previous exertion 

 of maturing a crop. In this way they may last many years, and allow 



* " The shrub cultivated as an annual at Malta, under the incorrect title of Gossypium 

 herbaccum, may under certain circumstances last for several years. Thus the cotton- 

 growers at Motril in Spain raised many of their cotton plantations from Maltese seeds, 

 and yet they found the shrubs live for six or even ten years. This change of the lon- 

 gevity of the plant is partly due to husbandry and partly to climate," Ure, vol. l t 0. 58-59. 



