Page:Madras Journal of Literature and Science, series 1, volume 6 (1837).djvu/103

1837.] vious outlay and labour bestowed on their culture. Could not the interference of art effect a beneficial alteration by so modifying the growth, as to allow the plants to attain greater maturity previous to flowering, thus fitting them longer to resist the drought and heat of the bearing season, and in an equal ratio increase the produce?

If the opinion stated above be found correct in practice, the plan I am about to propose for the attainment of this object will fail, but not believing it well founded, or rather indeed knowing it to be erroneous, at the same time esteeming it a duty incumbent on us to endeavour by every means in our power to augment the produce of the soil, more especially by teaching the natives improved modes of agriculture, I can have no hesitation in recommending the method for trial; the more so, as the requisite, trials to determine its value, may be made at a very small expense, and, if successfully, may with an inconsiderable increase of cost and labour lead to greatly augmented returns.

The prevalent practice in the cultivation of cotton is to prepare the ground by repeated ploughings after the first rains have loosened the surface, and wait for sowing, in some districts until the setting in of the petty monsoon in July, in others till October or November, when the first burst of the North East monsoon is past. From five to seven months after, the harvest begins, and lasts from one to two months.

With the view of ascertaining the relative advantages of late and early sowing, I constructed from the district reports the second column of the accompanying table, from which however no very satisfactory conclusion can be drawn, as the differences of seed-time seemingly depend on local variations of season in the different districts. In all, with the exception of Vizagapatam and perhaps Ganjam, the, in my opinion, objectionable system prevails, of allowing the plants to flower without a check before they have obtained sufficient maturity, or their roots have acquired that strength and diffusion, requisite to enable them to resist the drought of the dry season.

The method by which I propose to obviate this objection is the introduction of transplanting, a system so generally prevalent in native agriculture, and its advantages so well known, that it is not likely to meet frivolous or unsubstantial opposition.

In herbaceous vegetables "transplanting has the effect of increasing the proportion of fibrous relatively to their ramose roots, by which it is found to increase the size and succulency of their leaves, flowers and fruit." I anticipate other advantages. I think it will produce hardier and stronger plants by the check to vegetation which it will cause, allowing time for the first layer of wood to harden, and by conferring on the plants a somewhat biennial character, cause a larger formation of new shoots, on which the crop depends, and with them the produc-