AGRICULTURAL HISTORY AND DISTRIBUTION OF SORGHUM. 23 



A saccharine, or sirup-bearing, variety of sorghum is said ° to have 

 been largely grown locally for a long time at Bikanir, a point in 

 nortliAvest India, but seed of it has not yet been secured. A few 

 saccharine varieties were introduced from this country into India 

 thirty or more years ago, but did not prove popular in a country 

 where the same variety is expected to supply both human food and 

 animal forage. Amber and Collier sorgos, more or less pure, are 

 .'•till found there locally in very limited quantities. 



The large varieties of Abyssinia seem to be very similar to, if not 

 identical with, some of the larger India varieties, so far as one may 

 judge from immature specimens of Abyssinian plants. Commercial 

 intercourse between India on the one hand and Egypt and Abyssinia 

 on the other has always been very free, and it would be surprising 

 indeed if there had not been an interchange of the commonly culti- 

 vated crops. This may explain the similarity of some forms in the 

 two regions. 



There is abundant and quite conclusive evidence that cultivated 

 sorghums have originated independently in India and in Africa. 

 Andropogori halepensis, the presumable parent form, is abundantly 

 distributed and highly variable in India. In some sections it is spar- 

 ingly cultivated. In times of famine the seeds of this wild species 

 are generally utilized for food. It has been suggested by agricultural 

 writers of India that some of the forms now cultivated have been so 

 recently and directly derived from Andropogon halepensis that they 

 may still be referred to it rather than to Andropogon sorghum. 



China. 



In China sorghum is called " kowliang " (fig. 8) , or " tall millet," to 

 distinguish it from the various smaller millets, species of Panicum 

 and Chaetochloa (Setaria). All the forms studied by the writer, 

 except the single saccharine variety, belong to a single related group 

 of sorghums, which will henceforth be called the " kowliang group." 

 Three varieties used as food have been distinguished: Brown kow- 

 liang, the most common one, with brown seeds and black glumes; 

 blackhull kowliang, with white seeds and black glumes; and white 

 kowliang, with white seeds and pale or greenish glumes. The stems 

 are slender, usually quite dry and pithy, 4 to 11 feet in height, with ob- 

 long, somewhat open panicles G to 12 inches in length. Most of the 

 strains secured have very tall steins, due apparently to the need of 

 the Chinese to obtain as much fodder and fuel as possible with the 

 grain. While none of the introduced strains are heavy yielders of 

 grain, some of the dwarf forms are extra early and promise to be val- 

 uable as grain crops on our high plains if their productiveness can 



"Watt, 1S93, i>. 283; 1906, p. 111. 



175 



