AGRICULTURAL HISTORY AND DISTRIBUTION OF SORGHUM. 29 



duced as figures 12 to 15. They were all commonly used for human 

 and animal food, and the older ones were also used in the making of 

 brooms. After Arduino's work ceased, for causes not explained, no 

 especial attention seems to have been given to sorghum for sirup or 

 sugar production until the middle of the eighteenth century. 



In 1851 a saccharine sorghum from China arrived in France. It 

 had been sent with many other seeds to the Royal Geographical 

 Society by M. Mon- 

 tigny, the consul at 

 Shanghai. It was ob- 

 tained from the is- 

 land of Tsungming 

 (Chungming), lying- 

 in the mouth of the 

 the Yangtze River, in 

 latitude 32° north. A 

 single seed is said to 

 have terminated in 

 the garden at Toulon, 

 where the seed was 

 sent. The resulting 

 crop was secured at a 

 high price by Louis 

 Vilmorin, of Vilmo- 

 rin-Andrieux & Co., 

 well-known seedsmen 

 of Paris. This seed, 

 sold widely in Eu- 

 rope and afterwards 

 in the United States, 

 was the foundation 

 of the varietv lono- 

 known as Chinese 

 sorgo (fig. 9). 



In March, 1851, 

 Mr. Leonard \Vray, 

 an English sugar 

 planter, arrived in Natal, South Africa. Soon after, his attention 

 was attracted to numerous varieties of sorgo called " imphee," which 

 the Zulus or Kafirs cultivated for the sweet stems. These people 

 knew nothing of the art of expressing the juice by mechanical means, 

 but simply chewed the peeled stems. After considerable search Mr. 

 Wray succeeded in getting together sixteen varieties under their na- 

 tive names. These he brought to Europe about 1854 and arranged to 



175 



W 



4 d c o 6 



T „3fc 



Fig. 13. — Head of Holcus cafer, aftor Arduino, 1786. 



