To the Editor of the "Gardener's Chronicle."
I am very glad that my letter and your remarks on the improvement of cotton in India have attracted the attention of so able a correspondent as G. F. R. (Dr. Royle), who appears to be conversant with a good deal of what has been attempted there. No doubt there are, as he states, great diversities of soil and climate in so extensive a country as India; and if so, although there may be some which are not adapted to the growth of either the Gossypium Barbadense or the Gossypium Peruvianum, there must be both soil and climate suited to them in various localities in that country.
My chief reason for suspecting that the injury arises from the new kinds hybridizing with the indigenous cotton, is, that very good cotton has been grown from both varieties in the first generation, but when the seed from this first crop is sown again, the quality always deteriorates (at least all the gentlemen say so with whom I have conversed on this subject). I have a sample of Indian-grown cotton of excellent quality from Pernambuco seed, worth twice as much as the best Surat cotton I ever saw; but I cannot learn that anything deserving the name of aught but a sample was ever obtained. We hear of no increase in the quantity of this improved variety; it does not—like cotton in the United States—go on from ten bags to ten thousand, in eight or ten years; on the contrary, so far as I can learn, it dwindles away to nothing. The Tinnivelly cotton brought forward as an example by your correspondent is no exception to this—it is no more like Bourbon cotton, than Bowed cotton is like Sea Island—at least none that I ever saw. Bourbon is a long, silky-stapled cotton, whilst Tinnivelly has the shortness and inequality of fibre common to most of the cotton of India. It is generally much cleaner than the cotton grown on the western side of India, but this arises from the greater care in picking it.
An intelligent friend of mine, now in India, says that the pod of cotton is overhung by a brown leaf (bractea?), and if the cotton is gathered early in the morning, whilst the dew is on the plant, this leaf is tough and does not break, and the cotton is gathered clean; but if it is picked after the dew has evaporated, this leaf is brittle, and gets mixed with the cotton in the picking. But he says that no persuasion can induce the ryots to keep that which is picked in the morning from that which is gathered in the heat of the day. He also suggests that the cotton should be irrigated during its growth, and alleges as a motive for doing this, that in Egypt and Peru no good cotton can be grown without resorting to it. But the cases are not exactly parallel, inasmuch as no rain falls in either of these countries, whilst rain is most abundant in India, eighty or ninety inches of rain sometimes falling at Bombay in three months during the monsoon.
Another intelligent gentleman with whom I have conversed on this subject since my former letter was written, and who has resided at Bombay many years, where he has paid much attention to this subject, tells me that the gentleman entrusted by the East India Company with the management of one of the experimental cotton estates, assures him he has grown excellent Orleans cotton, and that the ryots were so satisfied with its superiority over the indigenous kind that 1,200 begahs (say 300 acres) were planted with it. But this was two years ago, and as the disturbances took place in this very neighbourhood, he fears these plantations have perished, as he heard no more of the matter, and had omitted to inquire of the gentleman entrusted with the management.
I reserved this until I saw the second letter from your correspondent G. F. R., which I have now read, as well as an article on the same subject in the "Manchester Guardian," in which it is stated that 20,000 acres are now under cultivation, planted with this improved cotton. I fear this is too good news to be true. My informant is a gentleman who was in correspondence with Mr. Mercer, the superintendent of these cotton estates, or some of them, and I have again questioned him. He says that the crop which would be gathered in March last, would amount to what I have stated (1,200 begahs), according to Mr. Mercer's letter to him, but he says it is now twelve months since he heard from Mr. Mercer, as he left Bombay for England shortly after. His fear was that none of this cotton would be gathered, as the disturbances which took place in Central India, and which required so long a time to quell them, were in this very district. If your correspondent G. F. R. has got samples of this improved cotton, of the second or third generation, he would confer a great obligation upon me by sending me a small sample of it by post. But this is wandering from what I intended to say, which was most heartily to thank your correspondent for his second communication, which goes far to prove the truth of what I had previously supposed, that the cotton of India is capable of great improvement by being judiciously crossed with suitable foreign varieties. Your correspondent thinks if the old varieties deteriorate the new when growing in proximity to each other, the new ought, for the same reason, to improve the old; and no doubt they will, but to a much smaller extent. It is said that a man leaping up into the air attracts the earth (proportionately) as much as the earth attracts him, and it may be so with the old and new cotton. What I mean to say is, that although some of the old sort of cotton might be hybridized by the new, the improved variety would be in so small a quantity that a thousand to one the cultivator would never observe it; and such is the aversion or indifference to anything new among the natives of India, that if an improved plant were observed, it is again a thousand to one he would take no pains to preserve it; and if he did, it is again perhaps a thousand to one that it would be entirely spoilt in the next generation by being planted among the indigenous sorts.
I trust your correspondent will continue to favour us with his communications whenever he has any fresh information on the subject, which, the more it is considered the more important it seems to be.
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PAPERS ON NATURAL HISTORY.
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