annual biennial, or perennial, shrubs,[1], if the hardening and cracking of the black clay soils in which they are grown do not prevent by too severely injuring the roots. But I rather think the annual character is mainly attributable to the stems being left vegetating after the crop is gathered, by which the strength of the root being exhausted through the constant and severe drain at the time it should be allowed to rest, it is no longer capable, on change of season, of producing a remunerating return, and is consequently extirpated to make way for a more profitable employment of the ground.
As in the cultivation of cotton the broadcast method of sowing is radically bad, advantage should be taken of the introduction of a new kind, to establish with respect to it, at whatever cost, drill husbandry, for if found advantageous, it will extend to the original country variety (which from the soil it affects can never be entirely superseded) and might be the means of enlarging and improving the produce. With this view the seeds should be sown in shallow furrows about 4 feet apart, and the plants afterwards thinned out to two or three feet distance from each other, according to the fertility of the soil and probable size of the bashes. Many advantages would result, the ground could be easily hoed and kept clean, and the crop gathered without injuring the bushes. If, as the natives almost invariably do, light crops are sown in the same field, they, by being also sown in rows, could be easily kept from injuring the cotton plants, either during their growth or while reaping them. The bushes would have room to grow to their full size, and produce individually much more cotton with less exhaustion to the soil. When well grown, say from two to three feet high, the ends of the branches should be lopped. This operation, by checking vegetation for a few days and allowing the plants some rest and time to harden their young wood, will be followed by a copious supply of new shoots, and, as they alone bear flowers, a greatly augmented crop. After the crop is gathered, vegetation should as much as possible be checked. The easiest way to effect this is to strip the bushes of their leaves, by eating them down with sheep or cattle, by which the ground is at the same time manured, and then cut down the stumps almost to the ground in imitation of the Persian method. The roots are thus saved from the exhausting efforts they otherwise make to support vegetation in the stem during an unfavourable season, after the previous exertion of maturing a crop. In this way they may last many years, and allow
- ↑ "The shrub cultivated as an annual at Malta, under the incorrect title of Gossypium herbaceum, may under certain circumstances last for several years. Thus the cotton-growers at Motril in Spain raised many of their cotton plantations from Maltese seeds, and yet they found the shrubs live for six or even ten years. This change of the longevity of the plant is partly due to husbandry and partly to climate." Ure, vol. 1, p. 58-59.
