96 Remarks on the Cultivation of Cotton. [July 



I have experienced much difficulty in the construction of this table, 

 from the prevalent, but not commendable practice among the Revenue 

 Officers, of employing in their reports, under their local denominations, 

 the weights and measures of their respective districts, often without 

 appending any scale by which they can be reduced to the more uniform 

 and better known English standard, whence, it is probable, errors will 

 be found in several of the calculations. 



The discrepancies, which the columns of square feet place in such a 

 prominent point of view, are such as to lead to a suspicion that some of 

 the returns are erroneous, for, if not, the obstacles to success in some 

 districts are vastly disproportioned to those of others. As, however, it 

 is by this kind of scrutiny that we are most likely to arrive at satisfac- 

 tory conclusions, I cannot hesitate to add these columns ; the more so, 

 as they suggest an easy method of testing the produce, which may prove 

 of great use in ascertaining the relative productiveness of different 

 portions of districts, and possibly of occasionally relieving the burthens 

 of some who may be over assessed, and equalizing those of others who 

 are under-rated. Nothing can be more easy than its application to grain 

 crops. The produce of a patch of five or ten feet square, of medium ferti- 

 lity, has only to be weighed, or rather measured, and the result, with 

 the requisite allowances for inequalities of soil, watering, &c, applied 

 to a greater or less extent according to local circumstances, will give a 

 nearly correct average for the whole. If to this column I could have 

 added the quantity of water required to irrigate the land during the 

 ripening of a crop of paddy, an important point would'have been gain- 

 ed, by enabling us to calculate not only the quantity of paddy annually 

 lost from want of water caused by evaporation from tanks alone, but the 

 value of every tun of water in a reservoir however large ; and, lastly, 

 how much we would gain by the substitution of deep and narrow- 

 tanks for the broad and shallow ones now in use, after deducting the 

 additional cost of raising the water by artificial means, such as pumps, 

 buckets, &c. worked by windmills, steam engines, or other mechanical 

 contrivances for generating power. 



