Page:Madras Journal of Literature and Science, series 1, volume 6 (1837).djvu/108

88 examining the progress of the experiments in all their stages, and forming a correct estimate of the benefits likely to accrue. This they could not have, if confined to the gardens and compounds of Europeans. But they ought to be made simultaneously in both situations, for success in the one may demonstrate satisfactorily the causes of failure, should such happen, in the other, and suggest such repetitions and modifications in the successive steps of the experiments, as may finally lead to the most triumphant results, by eliciting information of the greatest value, towards improving both the quantity and quality of tins most invaluable of vegetable productions.

There is another point of view, in which it is necessary to consider this proposal. One of the prominent defects of Indian agriculture is their neglecting to change the seed from time to time. Seed of the same stock is sown year after year on the same grounds, apparently in absolute ignorance of the advantages to be derived from change, and which is no where greater than in cotton cultivation; hence, we never hear of interchange of seed between different districts forming any part of the agricultural code of the Hindoos, but is one, which it is most desirable to establish, by proving experimentally its benefits. Spain, Italy, Sicily and Malta, each supplies itself with seed from its neighbour, and all benefit, though there is every reason to believe they were all supplied from the same original stock. Here it is probable the transplanting method will usefully come into play, for if finer and stronger plants are so reared, analogy teaches us that their seed will, even under the ordinary treatment, give a finer produce, and in this way advantage may be taken of the plan, intermediately, to improve the staple, even should it be found in other respects inapplicable to practice from the cost exceeding the profit.

In these remarks novelty is not aimed at: the practices recommended having all been successfully tried in different situations and circumstances; my object has been, merely to endeavour to reduce them to principles, under the idea that isolated facts, however valuable in themselves, never carry the same weight that they do when combined by a leading theory into a system. To lay the foundation of such a system is my wish, that I have yet even partially succeeded I am far from thinking, our disjointed materials being inadequate to the work, but if no other advantage results than that of proving the principles I have assumed inapplicable to practice, one step has been made towards ultimate success; and in the mean time, I shall continue the investigation which is here commenced, in the hope of ere long being able to produce a more satisfactory exposition of the principles which should guide us in cotton agriculture, than was possible within my present contracted limits.