HORTICULTURE. 329 



committee of Toulon has recently addressed a report to the Minister of War with respect to 

 the use of the plant in question. It is called the Sorgho, or Holeus saccharatus, and was first 

 introduced into France in 1851, by M. de Montigny, the French consul in China, who sent 

 some grains of the seed to the government. Since then the culture of the plant has been 

 commenced with success in Provence, and promises to be of great advantage to Algeria. 

 The sorgho has been called the "sugar-cane of the north of China;" and numerous experi- 

 ments have recently been tried with a view to ascertaining if it possesses the properties 

 necessary for producing a crystallizable syrup, so as to become a rival to sugar-cane and 

 beet-root. According to the report of the Toulon Agricultural Association, it would appear 

 to have those properties. The fact has been ascertained by a series of experiments made in 

 the department of the Var. It also appears to be richer in the saccharine principle than any 

 known plant, except the vine. Beet-root contains from eight to ten per cent, of sugar ; the 

 sorgho produces from sixteen to twenty per cent., from which eight or ten per cent, of pure 

 alcohol, fit for all industrial and domestic purposes, can be produced. The refuse is excel- 

 lent food for cattle, who are very fond of it. The plant grows with great rapidity, and does 

 not require irrigation. The sorgho is not a new discovery, as it has been used from time 

 immemorial by the inhabitants of the North of China, by whom large quantities of sugar 

 are extracted from it. But this is the first time it has been produced on any thing like an 

 extensive scale in Europe. 



M. Vilmorin has succeeded in making cider of the sorgho. In one experiment, with 200 

 kilogrammes of stalks, the product in juice was 55 per cent, of the weight of the stalks. This 

 quantity would give 6000 gallons to each hectare of land, (2 "47 acres.) 



This plant, or a variety of it, has also been found in South Africa, where it has received 

 the name " Imfe," or " Imfy." Mr. Wray, an English planter from Natal, states that fifteen 

 varieties of it may be found upon the south-west coast of Caffraria. In rich soil, it grows to 

 the height of six to nine feet, stalks erect, with flexible reclining leaves. Its habits are very 

 similar to that of Indian corn, but more elegant. It forms generally a tuft, composed of six 

 or seven stalks, terminated by a conical or rather serrate panicle, green at first, then passing 

 by violet shades into the deep purple of ripeness. Mr. Wray further states that the imfy 

 will grow wherever Indian corn will ripen, though it likes a hot, bright summer ; that two 

 crops a-year may be harvested in our cotton States, and one in any part of our country south 

 of 45° ; that it does not require replanting oftener than the hop, (say four times in a cen- 

 tury;) and that it will yield three to four thousand pounds of choice sugar to the acre at 

 each harvest. 



Mr. Wilder, a missionary of the American Board to South Africa, in a communication to 

 the New York Journal of Commerce, confirms the statements of Mr. Wray, and, in addition, 

 says: "While growing, the imfy resembles broom-corn, and produces its seed after the same 

 manner. The natives of Natal plant it with Indian corn, and cultivate it in the same man- 

 ner, and it comes to perfection in about the same time, say from three to four and a half 

 months. They cultivate it wholly for its saccharine juice, of which, under but slight pres- 

 sure, it yields a much larger quantity than does the common sugar-cane, but not of so rich 

 a quality. I should say that the same bulk of juice contained from one-half to three-fourths 

 as much sugar as the juice of common cane. The advantages it has over common cane are, 

 that it grows well wherever- Indian corn does, it is raised from the seed in four months 

 ready to be made into sugar, it grows on high lands as well as on low, and the abundance of 

 seed it pi'oduces may be used for provender for horses." 



Notwithstanding the flattering notices which have been given, and the high expectations 

 which seem to have been formed respecting these plants, a writer in the Philadelphia Florist 

 maintains that the sorgho or imfy is merely a variety of the ordinary broom-corn, " turned 

 up in a foreign land." 



Pumpkins and Squashes. 



We know of no vegetable genus in which there is so much confusion of names and charac- 

 ters among cultivators as the pumpkin and squash tribe, or Cucurbita of botanists. Their 

 common names have so multiplied, that a farmer, wishing to grow some for his stock or his 



