140 StUDIER IN INDIAN SUGARCANES 



but more abundant in the dry tracts. As we proceed to the more humid 

 regions, Bengal, Assam, Burma, this form, although present, shows transitions 

 to wider-leafed and thicker -stemmed forms, till we get canes with leaves nearly 

 a couple of inches wide and stems as thick as Ganna canes. There is, more- 

 over, a water form which is typically present in the ponds near Dacca, in the 

 old alluvium of the Madhapur forest, with tender green nodding leaves and 

 thickish stems rooting abundantly at the nodes, which in many respects is 

 much more like a cultivated cane than the dry land form (Plates I and II). 

 I learn from an Assistant Farm Manager at Dacca that this form is termed 

 kashi in the Hooghly District, where it is common on the alluvial banks of 

 streams. He says that it is given to children to chew and that his grandfather 

 states that in former times it was crushed for making yur.^ Whether there be 

 any truth in this or not, it is interesting to note that, among the seedhngs 

 obtained from it at the Cane-breeding Station, some had juice with over 

 8 per cent, of sucrose, which is higher than any yet obtained in our analysis of 

 wild Saccharums. This form suggests a starting point for primitive cultivated 

 canes. Throughout Burma we meet with a series of forms which appear to 

 connect these two latter (the thick land form and the water form), sometimes in 

 ponds, but more usually on the alluvial banks of the Irrawady, varying con- 

 siderably in the thickness of the stem and wid:th of the leaves. All of these 

 have the typical inflorescence of Saccharum apontanemn and mui,t therefore be 

 included in that botanical sj)ecies. They have been introduced iiito the Can.e- 

 breeding Station at Coimbatore and show themselves perfectly able to cross with 

 the cultivated canes there, whether thick or thin. We have raised seedlings by 

 selling each of them, but at present there has been no opportunity of examining 

 these in a detailed manner. We thus see in Sacchanwi sponiuneuin a develop- 

 ment in the size of the vegetative organs, as we pass from the dry to the humid 

 tracts in India, similar to that met with in the Saretha and Sunnabile series of 

 sugarcanes. Attention has been drawn to the obvious lesemblance between 

 the kahi grass and Katha in the Punjab, where the local ryots are accustomed 

 to point out kahi as the ancestor of Katha, their commonest cane.' In the 

 detailed list of characters showing differences between the Sun.nabile and 

 Saretha groups, we shall find a luimber mentioned in which the latter groujj 

 approaches Saccharani sponlaneinn. Such are the black incrustation on the 

 stem, the venation and transverse bars on the leaf-sheath, the prominence of 

 the midrib, the circlet of hairs on the nodes, the serrature of the leaf and the 

 extent of roughness on the surface at the leaf tip, the red brown colour of many 



^ Mem. 1, p. 2. 



