Papers on the cultivation of cotton in India / Committee of Commerce and Agriculture of the Royal Asiatic Society.

  • Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland. Committee of Agriculture and Commerce
Date:
1840
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Papers on the cultivation of cotton in India / Committee of Commerce and Agriculture of the Royal Asiatic Society. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    « Of the Pernambuco cotton it still remains to import seed as it does not abound, to naturalize it and then to search for tracts of country where it is likely to succeed on a large scale. The circum- stance of its growing in many spots [in India~\ with a staple equal to the original^ is a clear proof that it may be got to produce permanently a long staple^ which no other kind in this part of India has yet been PROVED to do.” The main difficulty would seem to be to find sufficient land in the neighbourhood of the Western Ghats, unappropriated by more profit- able or favourite crops, to grow this Pernambuco staple on a large scale. Of the provinces I have visited, I should consider the Wynaad the most promising; in fact, wherever there is a sufficient tract of sandy alluvial at the bases of the higher primary, and trap rocks, any where but the districts of “ black cotton soil” will afford good hope of success. Much sandy and gravelly soil, similar to that in which the Pernambuco has been seen to grow in an undegenerated state, is to be found in several of the Western Talooks of the Southern Maratha country. The following passage is from the interesting statistical report of Mr. Thomas IMarshall, printed by the Bombay Government in 1822, and describes the soil and situations required, which, when I was employed in those districts up to 1835, were still unappropriated. “ The certainty that the high gravelly plains will not bear profit- able crops of grain, and the almost equal certainty that they will bear trees and shrubs, naturally suggest the inquiry w'hether they may not be advantageously turned to the culture of some plants of shrubby growth, not requiring either much shelter or any great nicety of treatment. The two wffiich oceur to me as offering the best prospect of success, are the coffee, and the Bourbon cotton plants. The former grows in almost every situation where it has been tried, and though it be far more productive in rich soils, its berry is of a much superior quality in poor lands, and such is certainly its native soil of Arabia. The Bourbon cotton* is, I understand, remarked for succeeding best on rather high gravelly lands where the w'ater does not lie, and no useful plant seems to require so little care. The violence of the south- west monsoon might perhaps confine the culture of these plants to the eastern aspects of these high plains, but spontaneous shrubs seem to grow equally well on either Statistical Report on the Talook of Belgam, p. 61. * Straggling plants of Bourbon, as well as of Pernambuco, cotton, are found in this district, but the Peraambuco is the better staple. 1 2
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