10G 



Remarks on the Cultivation of Cotton* 



[July 



not a doubt of the success with which Bourbon cotton may be culti- 

 vated on the red loamy soils with which they abound ; but it does not 

 follow that it will equally succeed in the sandy, saline, coast soils 

 (though it has been ascertained to do so in those near the coast con- 

 taining a considerable admixture of clay), the very ones in which 

 American experience gives us reason to expect the American kinds 

 will thrive best. The determination of this point, therefore, is still an 

 important desideratum in Indian cotton agriculture, as there are 

 thousands of acres along the coast that might be most profitably de- 

 voted to that kind of culture. We know that, generally speaking, 

 cotton cannot be successfully cultivated on a wet soil ; our information 

 as to the fitness of a very light sandy soil is, on the contrary, very 

 defective. Should experience, however, prove them equally suitable, 

 for the culture of the Bourbon, Sea Island, and Upland Georgian, and 

 the former of these retain in both situations its superiority, there can- 

 not, in all such places, be a question of the propriety of retaining it 

 to the exclusion of the inferior sorts ; but it would be premature to 

 come to such a determination at this period of the enquiry : while, at 

 the same time, it is exceedingly desirable that a course of experiment 

 should be entered upon near the coast, for the purpose of determining 

 the fitness of coast soils for this kind of agriculture, which has not 

 hitherto been tried to any considerable extent on them. In America, 

 the advantages of a coast station, for the cultivation of cotton, is 

 strongly insisted upon, and to that circumstance alone much of the 

 superiority of the cotton of the Sea Island district is ascribed. Thus 

 Mr. Spalding declares, " the only essential point is a saline atmos- 

 phere, with it, any soil in Georgia or Carolina may produce fine 

 cotton, without it, no soil will." 



This is certainly laying down the law in strong terms, more so, I 

 think, than the evidence he adduces in support of it warrants, and I 

 hope much more so than our experience in this country will ever admit, 

 and leaves room to suspect, that he has allowed some pre-conceived 

 notions, respecting an imaginary property of the atmosphere, to mis- 

 lead his usually correct judgment, and led him to mistake the differ- 

 ence between an atmosphere loaded with saline particles, and a soil im- 

 pregnated with deliquescent salts, acted on by a simple humid atmos- 

 phere, thereby maintaining that moderate degree of moisture requisite 

 for the most perfect development, as an annual, of both the plant and 

 its products. 



In India a coast exposure may not be found quite so indispensable to 

 the production of fine cotton. In America the plant is from necessity 

 an annual, being too tender to survive the winter frosts; hence it must 

 pass through the successive stages of its existence in the summer sea- 

 son or during the short period of about seven months. 



