Supplement to the "Tropical Agriculturist 
[Aug. 1, 1903. 
Dormers. —Required three ounces of rice, half 
a pound of any cold meat, t*iro ounces of suet, a 
teagpoouf ul of chopped parsley, salt, pepper, eggs, 
and crumb3. Well wash the rice, put it in a pan 
with plenty o£ fast-boiling salted water, and boil 
till tender. Then strain off the water. Chop the 
meat and suet very finely, mix them with the 
boiled rice, add the parsley and salt and pepper 
to taste. Roll the mixture into the shape of 
small sausages, egg and crumb them, then fry a 
golden-brown in boiling fat. 
Tomatoes a la Montrell. — Take two fair- 
sized tomatoes, cut them in halves — not length- 
.^vays — remove the seeds and water and season with 
pepper and salt. Wash two chicken livers, care- 
fully remove the gall bags, scald in boiling water 
for a few minutes and chop them up finely. Melt 
a quarter of an ounce of butter in a saucepan, put 
the liver into it, add one teaspoonful of anchovy 
sauce, cayenne, and a little salt and one teaspoon- 
ful of bread crumbs, stir over the fire for a minute. 
Fill ftie tomato halves with this mixture. Place 
on a baking sheet in a hot oven for five to ten 
minutes till the tomatoes are tender. Serve hot 
on round croutons of fried bread the size of the 
tomato. " Mabxha." 
COTTON. 
The following interesting particulars connected 
with cotton growing as regards different varieties, 
and their cultivation, picking &c , taken from 
an address delivered by Dr. Morris, Commissioner 
at Agriculture in the West Indies early this year, 
■would be welcome ut this juncture when so much 
is being talked about the cultivutiou of the plant 
in Ceylon : — 
VARIETIES of COTTON. 
The more widely cultivated variety is that 
known as Upland cotton. The plants are usually 
low bushes and the cotton is short-stapled, the 
lint being not more than two or three times the 
length of the seed (about '93 inch.) What la 
known as Sea Island cotton is a special variety 
described as a native of the West Indies- It has 
a fine, long, silky lint, (1-61 inch) three or four 
times the length of the seed. It is cultivated on 
a small scale only in the islands off the coast of 
Georgia aud Carolina. It is seldom profitable to 
grow this in localities more than thirty miles 
from the sea. 
The Sea Island cotton is recommended for trial 
in the West Indies side by side with the best 
■varieties of Upland cotton. The return of Sea 
Island cotton is usually less than that of Upland 
cotton, but the increased price obtained for it 
more than compensates for the diminished yield. 
SOIL, AND CULTIVATION. 
In regard to soil there is no difiiculty likely to 
arise, as cotton is at present cultivated on nearly 
all kinds of soil. 
On sandy soils the yield of cotton is usually 
small. On clay lands, especially in wet seasons, 
the plants attain a largs size, but yield a small 
amount of lint in proportion to their size. The 
best soils for the crop are medium grades of loam. 
In the United States four feet is the u&ual 
accepted distance batween the rows, and the dis- 
tance between the plants is within the limits of 
8 to 14 inches. Experiments made at the Georgia 
Experiment Station for five years to determine 
the best distance between cotton plants indicate 
that on laud so rich, or so well fertilized, as to 
produce one and one-third bales (666 pounds) of 
lint per acre, the best distance is 4 feet between 
the rows and 1 foot apart in the rows. 
In Carriacou cotton is planted in rows three 
feet apart 'and two and a half feet in the rows. 
This is probably too far in the rows. 
The planting season commences in the States 
in the spring of the year just as all danger from 
frost is over, and the time the crop takas to 
mature varies between 120 and 157 days. The 
reaping season is about thirty days more, viz., in 
July, August and September. That would be 
about 26 weeks or 6 months for the whole crop. 
In a pound of cotton seed there are about 3,800 
to 4,000 seeds. At three seeds to a hole a pound 
would plant from about 1,250 to 1,300 holes. For 
fields planted in rows 4 feet apart and 1| feet 
apart in the rows, from 5^ to 6 lb. of seed would 
be required to plant an acre. 
The seed after the oil is extracted contains a 
large proportion of the manurial constituents 
required by the plant. On the average of 204 
analyses of this meal it was found to contain 6' 79 
per cent, nitrogen, 2"88 per cent-, phosphoric acid, 
and 1*77 per c&nt. potash. 
Cotton seed meal is also one of the most valu- 
able of the meals used for feeding live stock. If 
cotton seed meal and the hulls are returned to the 
soil there will be hardly any necessity of applying 
other manures, and the most advantageous way 
of doing this is to feed the meat and hulls to the 
animals and to apply the resultant manure to the 
land. 
TIME TO PLANT. 
For the West Indies it is probable that the b«st 
time to plant cotton will be in July and August. 
The crop should then come in early in December 
and January and be completed say by the end of 
February. Close planting will have, a tendency 
to produce an early crop and wide planting the 
reverse. If local seed is intended to be used for 
planting, it should bd selected with great care from 
strong and heavy-bearing plants. By this means 
a special race of cotton might be raised to suit 
local conditions. 
PICKING. 
With regard to picking cotton in the West 
Indies, the people may not be able, at once, to 
pick large quantijcies per day. The difficulty is to 
remove the lint quickly and completely, When 
the pickers go into the field, it is necesaary to 
place three fingers into the pod and remove the 
whole of the cotton at once, leaving the pod per- 
fectly clean. At one time it was thought that 
100 lb. a day was a fair average, but that is now 
considered rather small. In fact, there are keen 
and experienced pickers in the United States able 
to pick as high as 300 lb. of cotton a day. I saw 
women moving between the rows, picking the 
