134 STUDIES IN INDIAN SUGARCANES 



especially in the Jiortli, which (showed themselves capable of growing in the 

 open with comparatively little attention. These were unfitted for chewing 

 and were universally crushed in mills and made into jaggery or gur. 



The number of thick canes accumulated at Coimbatore soon became very 

 large, and there was no eviden.ce of our having exhausted the varieties grown in 

 different tracts. It was noted that they w^ere often only known by the name 

 of the place from which they had been received, with the addition of some 

 such word as " Pannda," and a number of them were obviously the same cane 

 hailing from different places. The names frequently suggested that they 

 were introduced or foreign canes and not indigenous in the country. It was 

 found to be diffcult to grow them on the untreated land of the Cane-breeding 

 Station and many of those which survived were abnormal in their growth. 

 It was thus seen that any attempts at their classification, which was at first 

 projected, would be extraordinarily difficult, and that it would be idle to 

 commence this, until further details were obtainable as to their migrations 

 and original sources. WTien a good stock w^as obtained for seedling work, 

 their further collection was therefore discontinued, or at any rate took a 

 secondary place. 



The other class, of thin, gur-making varieties, proved, however, to be 

 much more interesting. There was no trace of their having been introduced 

 into India, and there was no country with which I was acquainted from which 

 they could have come. The only exotic varieties of this class, w^hich had been 

 received from abroad, were the Ytiba cane from Natal, which readily falls into 

 line in the great Pansahi group, and two Java varieties which I have as yet 

 been unable to place in any special Indian class, but which have been imper- 

 fectly examined. These thin canes were therefore considered to be indigenous 

 in India, as contrasted with the introduced varieties, and soon showed 

 among themselves several well-defined classes which were easily separable. 

 Each year, in planting out the increasing series of thin canes, care was 

 taken to put together all those which showed systematic relationship, so 

 that the plots themselves might indicate the classification. Many of them 

 were, indeed, so similar to one another that the conclusion forced itself on 

 one's mind that, here too, the same canes had been collected mider different 

 names from different localities, and that such sfight differences as were observ- 

 able might in all probability be ascribed to the var}dng conditions of culture 

 and climate under Avhich they had long been grown. The following groups 

 were readily formed, Mungo, Nargori, Pansahi, and Katha, while there were 

 indications of others, such as the transitional Bodi group and the small Khelia 

 section, 



