STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 159 



of two or three inches. Its growth there is larger than in Bar- 

 badoes. (See Dr. J. W. Lugenbeel's "Sketch of Liberia," p. 

 24.) The Doctor does not state whether it tops out or not, but 

 at the lieight of fifteen feet we hardly need ask the question. 

 Neither does he state whether it bears seed. 



Indian corn, when planted at midsummer, often matures its 

 ears sufficiently for boiling before frost; but in the event of a 

 cold autumn, as in the case of 1856, it does not even head out. 

 Suckers about the base of the plant, even in good seasons, do not 

 head out, though often bearing an imperfect ear at the top of the 

 plant where the tassel might have been expected. In very 

 prosperous years of corn culture we often find a small irregular 

 ear of well ripened grain on the very apex of the tassel, although 

 the Indian corn is a dioecious plant, having its staminate organs 

 at the top. 



These, and such like facts, in the culture of corn, go strongly 

 to suggest, analogically at least, that in its appropriate climate? 

 and by proper culture, the sugar cane ought to bear seed freely. 

 The failure of tropical plants to mature so as to exhibit seed, 

 or other appropriate secretions, in a northern climate, is a mat- 

 ter of common experience. In 1851,1 planted a convolvulus 

 imported from Madeira. It was forwarded in a hot bed, and 

 grew with great vigor and health, but never developed a single 

 flower. Humboldt hints somewhere, I think, that wheat, on 

 the Mexican Andes, refuses to head. So the potato, imported 

 from Valparaiso, never formed a tuber. Indeed, it is a frequent 

 fact in agriculture, that many plants, even in their appropriate 

 climates, fail to ripen seed or fruit, when excessively or other- 

 wise unwisely cultivated. I cannot therefore consider the con- 

 stant failure of the sugar cane to top out and bear seed, in the 

 southern States, in any other light than that of a j)roof of its 

 permanent immaturity in the region where it is thus cultivated. 

 That it now begins to fail, after so long a period of tolerably 

 successful culture, is a proof then, not of its essential feeble- 

 ness as a species of plant, but rather of naturally great vigor 

 of constitution. 



(3.) The disease of the sugar cane is attended with just those 

 marks that indicate that the climate is especially at fault. 



