Page:Madras Journal of Literature and Science, series 1, volume 6 (1837).djvu/110

99 —Two kinds of country cotton are in cultivation, the white and red. The white is sown in well prepared rich black soil, and nay be repeated annually, together with paddy seeds and coondooloo (cholum?), early in June. The field is then ploughed again, to bring the seeds into regular rows, and harrowed with hurdles to level it, and afterwards weeded several times. The gathering is in March, April and May, the produce is about 12 maunds of seed-cotton per acre. The same plants often produce a second but inferior crop, and are said not to be injured by much rain. This seems to be a very unusual variety, and might be successfully tried on the Malabar Coast, the cotton plant rarely admitting of cultivation on soils capable of producing paddy, unless in the instance where the latter is grown in trenches dug between beds for the purpose of draining the soil intended for the other, which does not seem to be the case here, at least it is not So mentioned*

Red cotton.—This is sown in a waxy soil (stiffish clay?), previously well ploughed—completely sandy ones do not answer. This kind of soil pays an assessment of only 2, while the black pays about 6 rupees the acre. The sowing commences in October in furrows 8 (3?) to one fathom, the seeds about three inches apart. When about eighteen inches high, the ground is weeded, and the operation several times repeated, till April, when the harvest begins. In fair seasons the produce is about 20 maunds, or 5001bs. of seed-cotton per acre, which, at the rate of sixteen rupees per candy, leaves a profit of ten rupees to the cultivator.

This variety seems well suited for culture in the hottest and most arid tracts of the interior, from its astonishing power of resisting heat and drought. The produce being always great in proportion to the continuance and intensity of the hot land winds, but does not give a second crop. It is afterwards stated the rows are two feet apart. I presume the latter is correct

—In this district drill husbandry is adopted in the cultivation of cotton. Country cotton is sown in preference in black soils, but is not confined to them—the rows are about four feet apart, and the plants from one and half to two. The same methods and soils were tried for American and Bourbon cottons, but both failed, principally it is supposed owing to the heat and want of rain that season, but perhaps partly also owing to the injudicious selection of soil. Contrary to what takes place in Rajahmundry, the sea breezes are said to cherish and improve the plant, while it shrinks under the stroke of land winds and fails to give its crop. An interchange of seeds might benefit both.

The sowing takes place in August and September, the gathering commences in February, and is over by the end of March. It seems very desirable to repeat the trials with American and Bourbon cotton, the former on the calcarious saline soils of the coast, the latter on the gravelly and loamy ones of the interior.