Page:Madras Journal of Literature and Science, series 1, volume 6 (1837).djvu/104

84 tion of cotton at an earlier stage of the hot season (while the ground is yet moist), a prolonged harvest, and an augmented crop.

The plan I am pursuing, in a series of experiments undertaken with the view of determining the probable success of the method, is, that of sowing the seed in beds, from which they are afterwards to be trans- planted into the open ground with the first favourable change of weather. In my experiments I fear it will turn out that the sowing was too early (end of March and beginning of April), and that the plants will have attained an inconvenient size before such a change can be anticipated, but I imagine from a month to six weeks old, will be found a good age for removal. In transplanting, one of two methods might be adopted, especially where the English plough is in use, namely, either by laying the plants in deep furrows (the root should be extended its full length) four feet apart, or by the holing system. The holes should be two or three feet distant and six or eight inches deep, equal to the full length of the root. In this way they would be planted regularly, and at such distances as to permit free access for weeding, hoeing and gathering, without injuring the bushes, while they would be prevented choaking each other, and injuriously exhausting the soil by being too thickly sown.

In most parts of the country it is the native practice to sow grain among the cotton plants, and it is said without injuring the cotton crop. Should this, on careful comparative trials, be found not injurious, the practice would be greatly facilitated by the transplanting system. Green crops of the larger kinds of dry grain might be very conveniently taken and dried, and stored like hay for provender; the want of which in most cotton countries is much felt, while it is known that no kind of dry forage is more nutritious or more relished by cattle. The cotton itself might also be expected to prove better in quality, as well as more in quantity, from being the produce of vigorous and well matured plants.

These sanguine expectations are, it must be confessed, in a great degree, but not altogether, speculative, for in the Vizagapatam collectorate, where liberal pruning is practised, the return is much greater than in any other district. This operation acts much in the same way, by, in the first instance, checking vegetation, which is followed by the production of numerous new shoots and abundance of flowers. There the annual cotton plants, when about three months old, are freely pruned, while the bushes of the triennial sort are cut down nearly to the ground the second and third years, and the produce is said to amount to 46 maunds or 1150 lbs. of seed cotton per acre, nearly equal to the best, and exceeding the ordinary, American crops. In Ganjam the same course, though not stated, seems to be pursued, since the amount