b6 



Retnarks on the Cultivation of Cotton* 



[July 



the more superficial series will be brought in contact, will draw from 

 them an abundant supply of absorbing fibrous ones. The Persian 

 practice seems to confirm the American belief, that cotton is not an 

 exhausting crop, and that the rotation crop taken there every third 

 year, is not so much to relieve the land as to prevent a disposition 

 which cotton has to generate insects and blight, which in Persia the 

 annual crop of grain seems to obviate. 



It seems of importance to ascertain whether a practice such as here 

 recommended can be introduced successfully, since it might be the 

 means of establishing more extensively the method of pruning, which 

 I have already shown to be so advantageously adopted in the Vizaga- 

 patam district, but which in other districts is scarcely if at all known, 

 by proving to demonstration, that so far from being injurious to the 

 plant, that it may be boldly cut down to the root with evident advan- 

 tage. To this it may be added, that if the country cotton plant was so 

 cut down after gathering the crop, and the roots relieved from the ex- 

 hausting and destructive effort to support vegetation in the stems, at a 

 most unfavourable season, that they might be made to produce a suc- 

 cession of remunerating crops, allowing the ground at the same time, 

 to be as freely employed for the production of annual crops of grain, 

 while the new stems of the cotton plant are growing, as if nothing 

 else was there ; thereby, as has been done in Persia, Spain, Sicily and 

 the Levant, in all of which, the same species seems to be the one culti- 

 vated, changing the constitution and habit of the plant from that of a 

 small annual to a perennial. 



In submitting these hints, with the view of requesting the aid of the 

 Revenue Officers to carry into effect the required experiments to deter- 

 mine their value, it does not appear advisable that they should be un- 

 dertaken on an expensive scale ; such a proceeding is not necessary to 

 establish the principle if correct, and failure in such a case might be 

 productive of serious injury, by discouraging further attempts at im- 

 provement. 



The method I am pursuing is to sow samples of a variety of different 

 kinds of seed (communicated by the Madras Agricultural Society) in 

 beds eight or ten feet square. The plants, with the exception of a few 

 to be left for comparison, will be planted out when the rains set in. In 

 all other respects the usual methods of agriculture will be adopted, and 

 the result carefully noted. 



In preparing the seeds they were soaked in water ten or twelve hours 

 previous to sowing, a proceeding which probably tended to make them 

 vegetate quicker, but is not necessary. Of the kinds sown, were two 

 samples of Sea Island, one received in 1836, the other 1837 ; the 

 former entirely failed, while nearly every seed of the latter has vege- 

 tated : two samples of New Orleans marked 1836 and 1837 j the latter 



