Page:Madras Journal of Literature and Science, series 1, volume 6 (1837).djvu/114

94 the best methods of cultivating the American cottons, and the kind best suited for India. The results are upon the whole unsatisfactory owing principally, the committee believe, "to our ignorance of the proper seasons for sowing; bad seed; and from the selection of land, rather forced upon the society and wholly unsuited to the growth of cotton, being too rich in most places, and too salt in others." The committee observe "This fact is so palpable that it hardly requires remark. It has shown itself in every progressive step from sowing the seed, to the last stage of cropping the cotton.

"1st. It has shown itself by the rapidity and luxuriance of vegetation in the production of abundance of wood, leaf, and flower, but little produce.

2d. By an almost unceasing process of blossoming, thereby exhausting the plant before it had attained maturity, and consequently deteriorating the staple in the ratio of excessive bearing.

3d. By the general result of short produce, an invariable sign of too rich and moist a soil.

4th. To another cause your Committee are disposed, to ascribe failure, viz. an improper mode of planting."

The Committee also point out that broadcast sowing will not answer with the American plant. That the soil requires to be dug to a great depth, about 18 inches, the tap root extending nearly that length, and, if obstructed, checking its growth. This precaution cannot be so necessary in the light sandy soils I have recommended, as in the clay one of Akra, but, when cotton is cultivated in the best manner, must always be attended to. Transplanting was tried on one occasion, but without any beneficial result. The following paragraph I quote entire, as affording so pointed a confirmation from experience, of the plan I had advocated from analogy, and which will I trust be frequently tried, so as to leave no doubt of the advantages likely to flow from a systematic adoption of it in all kinds of cotton cultivation, to which experience may prove it applicable.

"Your Committee would beg your special attention to the following paragraph from Mr. De Verinne's letter to the officiating Secretary, dated Surdah, 5th August, 1835: "The out-turn of the last season 1832-33, shows a more favourable result, as 60 maunds of clean cotton and 180 maunds of cotton-seed, were gathered at the farm from December 1832, to May 1833. It must be recollected that the greater part of this cotton and seed was produced from 90 beegahs and 91 cottahs of Upland Georgia cotton cultivation, sown the previous season, the stumps of which only were left after the severe hail storm of the 25th and 26th March, 1832; these stumps threw out fresh shoots during the rainy season of that year; were partially pruned, and well hoed up at the conclusion of the rains, and yielded from December to