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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