The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom / Considered in Their Various Uses to Man and in Their Relation to the Arts and Manufactures; Forming a Practical Treatise & Handbook of Reference for the Colonist, Manufacturer, Merchant, and Consumer, on the Cultivation, Preparation for Shipment, and Commercial Value, &c. of the Various Substances Obtained From Trees and Plants, Entering into the Husbandry of Tropical and Sub-tropical Regions, &c.

by P. L. Simmonds

5. Purple Otaheite.

6. Ribbon cane.

My friend, Mr. L. Wray, in his "Practical Sugar Planter," considers the Bourbon, and yellow, or straw-coloured Otaheite cane, as identical, but merely altered by change of soil and climate. The yield from these cane-plants seems to be about the same in either Indies, viz., in good land about two-and-a-half tons of dry sugar per acre—sometimes three tons.

A very large species of red cane, grown at Gowhatty, in Assam, is made favorable mention of for its strength of growth, early maturity, and juiciness; and Mr. Wray strongly recommends the introduction into the West Indies of another fine variety, generally grown in the Straits' settlements, where it is known by the name of the Salangore cane. He considers they would ratoon better than any other cane, and the return from it is on the average 3,600 lbs. of dry sugar to the acre.

"For my own part, I have always reckoned as an average, 3,600 lbs. of dry sugar to the acre as the return this cane will give, on anything like good land, in the Straits, according to the present imperfect mode of expressing and manufacture; but, considering the surpassing richness of land in the West India Islands, Demerara, and Mauritius, I should not be in any way surprised to find that it would there give even three tons an acre.

The Salangore cane grows firm and strong; stands upright much better than the Otaheite; gives juice most abundantly, which is sweet and easy of clarification, boils well, and produces a very fine, fair sugar, of a bold and sparkling grain."

Much discussion has arisen on the subject of raising the sugar cane from seed, and the possibility has been universally denied among the planters and agricultural societies of the West India colonies. Mr. Pritchard, a sugar planter of Louisiana, in the "United States Patent Report for 1850," however, states:—

"It is an error to suppose that the cane cannot be propagated from the seed. This may be the case when the seed is obtained from plants that have been produced for a number of years from buds, or eyes. All plants that have been produced in this way for a series of years, lose the faculty of forming prolific seeds; and the sugar cane is governed by the same laws which govern the whole vegetable kingdom. It cannot, therefore, be expected to produce seeds after it has been cultivated for a great length of time."

The sugar cane is composed of water, woody fibre, and soluble matter, or sugar. In round numbers it may be stated that the proportions are 72 per cent. of water, 10 per cent. of woody fibre, and 18 per cent. of sugar.

The fluid contents of a cane, according to Dr. Evans, contain 90 per cent. of the entire structure of the stem.