Page:Madras Journal of Literature and Science, series 1, volume 6 (1837).djvu/106

86 the more superficial series will be brought in contact, will draw from them an abundant supply of absorbing fibrous ones. The Persian practice seems to confirm the American belief, that cotton is not an exhausting crop, and that the rotation crop taken there every third year, is not so much to relieve the land as to prevent a disposition which cotton has to generate insects and blight, which in Persia the annual crop of grain seems to obviate.

It seems of importance to ascertain whether a practice such as here recommended can be introduced successfully, since it might be the means of establishing more extensively the method of pruning, which I have already shown to be so advantageously adopted in the Vizagapatam district, but which in other districts is scarcely if at all known, by proving to demonstration, that so far from being injurious to the plant, that it may be boldly cut down to the root with evident advantage. To this it may be added, that if the country cotton plant was so cut down after gathering the crop, and the roots relieved from the exhausting and destructive effort to support vegetation in the stems, at a most unfavourable season, that they might be made to produce a succession of remunerating crops, allowing the ground at the same time, to be as freely employed for the production of annual crops of grain, while the new stems of the cotton plant are growing, as if nothing else was there; thereby, as has been done in Persia, Spain, Sicily and the Levant, in all of which, the same species seems to be the one cultivated, changing the constitution and habit of the plant from that of a small annual to a perennial.

In submitting these hints, with the view of requesting the aid of the Revenue Officers to carry into effect the required experiments to determine their value, it does not appear advisable that they should be undertaken on an expensive scale; such a proceeding is not necessary to establish the principle if correct, and failure in such a case might be productive of serious injury, by discouraging further attempts at improvement.

The method I am pursuing is to sow samples of a variety of different kinds of seed (communicated by the Madras Agricultural Society) in beds eight or ten feet square. The plants, with the exception of a few to be left for comparison, will be planted out when the rains set in. In all other respects the usual methods of agriculture will be adopted, and the result carefully noted.

In preparing the seeds they were soaked in water ten or twelve hours previous to sowing, a proceeding which probably tended to make them vegetate quicker, but is not necessary. Of the kinds sown, were two samples of Sea Island, one received in 1836, the other 1837; the former entirely failed, while nearly every seed of the latter has vegetated: two samples of New Orleans marked 1836 and 1837; the latter