1837.] 



Remarks on the Cultivation of Cotton. 



85 



of produce is the same,* though the soil is thought inferior, while in 

 Trichinopoly, the next highest, with a fertile soil, 31 maunds 8 lbs., or 

 783 lbs., is the greatest return, which, though so much less than the 

 above, is still more than double the average return from the neigh- 

 Louring districts of Tanjore, Salem, Coimbatore, Madura and Tinnevel- 

 ly. The agriculturul processes are not detailed. From N. Arcot, 

 Bellary, and Cuddapah, the two last the principal cotton districts of the 

 peninsula, no reports have yet been received. 



A slight inspection of the table will show that, in selecting the time 

 for entering on the experiments here proposed, we are not to be guided 

 by the Calendar, but by the local variations of the seasons, the prin- 

 cipal of them being, to have well grown plants ready to transplant at 

 what is now the usual season of sowing, with the view of ensuring a 

 continued production of new shoots and flowers through a period of 

 several months, an effect, that will be still further secured by occasi- 

 onal topping the extreme branches during the operations of weeding 

 and hoeing. 



Hitherto I have supposed the annual varieties the ones under trial, 

 though I consider the plan equally, or rather more applicable to the 

 foreign sorts. But with respect to them something more may be done. 

 In the districts w T here the Bourbon and American kinds are in cultivation, 

 I would recommend that one or two fields, which have already produced 

 their usual rotation, and are about to be ploughed up, should be opened to 

 the grazing of cattle and sheep, and when they have taken all they can 

 get from them, to have the woody stems cut down to the roots, the land 

 well ploughed between the rows, and then left to produce a fresh crop 

 of shoots on the return of the rains. The fourth crop of Bourbon, 

 cotton from the same roots is now usually considered scarcely worth 

 the trouble of collection, and the American is cultivated as an annual, 

 but might thus I apprehend be rendered biennial, or even perennial. 

 In Persia we are told that the practice here recommended is annually 

 practised, and that the same plants so treated, last many years (20 or 

 30), the land every season producing besides a crop of grain. If in 

 this way we can get only one or two additional good crops from the 

 same roots, a great saving would be effected, as it must cost much less 

 to plough and manure the ground in this way, than to root out the old 

 plants, allow it to lie fallow for a season, and then re-sow. The great 

 size, and the depth to which the ramose roots must have previously 

 penetrated, will have placed the greater part of them beyond the reach 

 of injury from the plough, and the new fresh manured soil with which 



* The collector has since informed me that this is a mistake, originating in the unclean- 

 ed or seed cotton having by an oversight been noted in the column for cleaned. 



