6 4 * 



THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 



[February 



of the stones mortices are cut, into those of one cylinder 

 wooden teeth are iuserted, which work into correspond- 

 ing cavities in the other cylinder. The axles are of wood, 

 one of them being prolonged above the frame ; into this is 

 inserted a long beam, to which two oxen are attached. The 

 canes are only partially crushed at the first passing, but 

 they are taken back and repassed between the rollers 

 several times. The cane juice is carried iu wooden buckets 

 to the boiling house. This is a small shed attached to 

 the mill house. Here are three small cast-iron pans, about 

 2 ft. 6 in. in diameter, set in a triangular form over the 

 furnace. The latter is a sort of oven with the bottom of 

 the pans coming through the crown; it has no flues or 

 chimney; the same hole through which the fuel is fed 

 also serves as an escape for the smoke, which finds its 

 way out of the building through a hole in the roof. 

 When the Sugar has been cleaned by the use of lime 

 and skimming, it is either run out into shallow wooden 

 trays and stirred up while cooling to prevent the form- 

 ation of grain, or else it is run into earthenware pots. 

 By the first method they produce a very fine-grained brown 

 Sugar, containing all the Molasses, but in a form that 

 will rot drain; it is, in fa"ct, concrete iu a powdered form. 

 The Sugar run into the earthenware pots is not cooked 

 to so high a point ; some of it has a very good grain and 

 makes excellent white Sugar when clayed. Outside is a 

 busy scene. The canes are being carried in bundles to 

 the mill house with all the leaves and tops on. At the 

 door are numbers of men, women, and children sitting 

 down among the heaps of cane, cutting off the tops and 

 leaves ; these are all made up into separate bundles ; the 

 tops are used for seed and the leaves for the cattle. 

 The Chinese waste nothing. They use for manure the re- 

 fuse from the villiages, and import large quantities of 

 bean cake. The land I saw was of poor quality and the 

 canes were small. But near Canton I saw some fields of 

 really fine cane, growing tall and straight. To obtain this 

 they had placed rows of tall stakes at short intervals in 

 the fields to keep the canes from falliug; they also earth 

 up. All their fields are kept very clean — no land is wasted 

 or allowed to lie fallow. They alternate crops and use 

 every effort to return to the soil what has been 

 taken from it by each successive crop. Even the richer 

 portion of the soil that is washed away during the rainy 

 season, and deposited at the bottom of the water channels, 

 is dug out and distributed over the poorer portions of 

 their fields. These people are very poor, but they are 

 most thrifty and do not suffer want. It was cold weather 

 when I was there, and I especially noticed that all were 

 comfortably clad — even the children of the poorest look- 

 ed comfortable aud healthy. The condition of the Chinese 

 peasant working on his own little plot of land with his 

 family around him, even the little ones helping to sup- 

 port the family, offers a most pleasing contrast to the 

 life of the Chinese coolie working on the foreign plant- 

 ations. These men are just as fond of home and children 

 as we are, and will work honestly for their support; 

 but ouce you sever a poor aud ignorant man from all 

 domestic ties you take from him every chance of developing 

 bis better qualities, life becomes a drudgery, and he breaks 

 the monotony by seeking the excitement of the gamiug 

 table, or the dreams of the opium-smoker. On my way 

 home 1 touched at Saigon, Singapore, and Penang. At 

 the latter place I stayed a few days to visit the Sugar 

 plantations iu province Wellesley. This is a British colony, 

 and is heing worked with care, but the soil is not good, 

 being mangrove swamps and reclaimed from the sea. All 

 the cultivation has to be done by band, and a greater 

 number of field hands employed to produce a given amount 

 of Sugar than in any country I know of. The canes look 

 very well and are well cared for, but they are not so thick 

 as I like to see. About two tons of sugar per acre may 

 be considered the average yield. The only new process 

 I saw was their system of clarification. A quantity of 

 clay is mixed with the lime aud stirred up in the clarifier ; 

 no scum is taken olf. but the juice boiled up for a few 

 minutes in order to mix up the impurities with the clay 

 and lime. It is kept boiling while being drawn off, when 

 in a short time all the impurities settle to the bottom; 

 the clay being heavy carries down the light stuff, the 

 clear liquor is then decanted off, and the water evaporated 

 without any skimming. The juice has the appearance of 



being well clarified. In a clarifier of 350 gallons I saw 

 3 lb. of lime and 12 lb. of clay used as temper ; the clay 

 was ground up fine and mixed into a soft paste without 

 grit. All these plantations use the vacuum pans and pro- 

 duce a very high class Sugar; but these canes give a 

 very much larger proportion of Molasses than yours do 

 1 he labour for these plantations conies from two sources 

 —the native Malay and the imported coolie from South- 

 ern India. There are also a few Chinese, but they mostly 

 work on their own account and soon intermix with the 

 natives of the country. I do not think that either the 

 Hindoo or the Malay is as good a labourer as the Chinaman 

 and I gather from inquiry .among the people from India 

 that the Hindoos are altogether averse to emigration, and 

 although the British Government still looks after them and 

 gives them ample protection wherever they go, still they 

 require much enticing before they can be induced to leave 

 their native land. This labour question is always beset with 

 difficulties. No matter from what country you import 

 your men, so long as you want hands only you will get 

 the scum of the population, fellows very low down 

 in the social scale of their own people, men long ad- 

 dicted to idleness. There are always bad cases to deal 

 with, bad children to educate, but it must be done If 

 your planters want really good servants, they must educate 

 them up to their standard. If you would have faithful 

 men, remove as much as possible the brutalisiug influences 

 and try to make men of these fellows. I know that this 

 may not be the best way to get the biggest crop off next 

 year ; but your are not working for next year alone, but 

 for the future of Hawaii. Are there not children grow- 

 ing up about you? Do not be satisfied with any temp- 

 orary remedy, as the bringing of a lot of men from China ■ 

 try by every possible means to induce families of work- 

 ing people to settle on your estates. Make them feel 

 they have a home. This may require time and patience, 

 but for the man who has a large estate in the future 

 it will pay. We are all responsible for higher and more 

 serious -things than the amount of Sugar per acre, and 

 our duty to our hands is not finished by the payment 

 of their wages. Of course I know that the man who 

 starts a plantation for the purpose of improving the 

 morals of the Chinese will soon become bankrupt, and 

 I hold that the first lesson in morality is to teach a 

 labourer to do an honest day's work ; but much can be 

 accomplished by not* treating a man as a mere machino 

 and driving him all we can, and by trying to counter- 

 balance the brutalisiug tendencies of plantation life. It 

 should lie on every man's conscience to do all he can 

 for the men in his employ."— Produce Markets' llevieu- 



VEGETABLE PHYSIOLOGY— CIRCULATION OF 

 THE SAP. 



A paper read by Prof. J. W. Robson, of Kansas, before 

 the Mississippi Valley Horticultural Society, at Kansas 

 City, January 22, 1884: — 



The roots are those parts of a plant on which it is 

 chiefly dependent for the supply of the. moisture which 

 its growth requires, and also serves to fix the plant iu the 

 soil. 



That they absorb or suck up fluid with great rapidity 

 may be easily shown. Take any small plant that is grow- 

 ing iu the soil, and immerse its roots in a tumbler of 

 water; if the plant be exposed to the light of day, and 

 especially if the sun shine brightly upon it, the water will 

 disappear very much faster from "the glass than from one 

 exposing the same surface, placed in the same circum- 

 stances, but without the plant; and if the specimen con- 

 tinues to grow and flourish, it will take up many times 

 its own weight of water in a short period. 



Of the water thus absorbed, a small proportion only is 

 retained within the plant. The greatest part of it is sent 

 off again from the leaves by a process termed exhalation, 

 and the rapidity of absorption is, in part, governed by the 

 rapidity of the above process. 



If the leaves of a peach tree are stripped off, the fruit 

 amounts to nothing. This fact was exemplified twice in 

 Kansas during the last decade by the grasshopher in- 

 vasion of that period. When the leaves of the grape or the 

 gooseberry have been devoured by caterpillars, the fruit 

 remains small and sour, aud entirely worthless for the food 



