44 



TILLERING IN INDIAN SUGARCANKS 



In the laborious work of dissection I desire to acknowledge my indebted 

 ness to various members of my staff. At first all the dissections were done by 

 myself, but I soon found that I was unable to cope with it, and interested 

 my Assistant, M. R. Ry. T. S. Venkataraman, in the work and, later on, my 

 second Botanical Assistant, M. R. Ry. U. Vittal Rao. With their help, I 

 then trained two fieldmen, and the great mass of the later dissections were 

 done by the latter under my personal supervision. In the first year, Fieldman 

 G. V. James and, in the second, K. Rangaswami Pillai were engaged for months 

 in the work, and I am greatly indebted to these officers for their care and 

 intelligence. The selection in the field was entrusted to Fieldman R. Thomas, 

 who had charge of rough cleaning and sending to the laboratory. The prepara- 

 tion of diagrams was mostly done by myself but, towards the end, here also I 

 was able to leave it to Rangaswami Pillai. Several months were devoted 

 to the work each year and, in 1917-18, it was found necessary to place three 

 workers under the latter officer, who developed extraordinary neatness in his 

 preparations. He was in entire charge of the work done on Red Mauritius 

 canes at Nellikuppam. The shoot counting was under the direction of M. R. 

 Ry. Venkataraman and chiefly done by R. Thomas and Plant Collector Abdul 

 Sathar. 



Measurements of Saccharum aranclmaceum II 2, 1917-18. 

 (Extracted from the office files.) 



Note. The development is fair, but not so mathematically arranged 

 as in I 1. 



Buds long, flat, hairy, scale like and not like the shooting buds of other 

 varieties. 



Formula. Canes at harvest : « -)- 66 -f lie -{-M + 4e. 



Lemjih of joints in the first 2' and thickness at 2' from the base. The first 

 figure before the -f- is the length of the basal, preparatory portion of the cane, 

 and consists of many short joints, (c, meaning curve, is inserted after the 

 curve has finished.) 



ft 3f, 1. 4i + IJ, U, li, 2, 2, 2h, 2.^, 2i, 8 



h' 2 + li, 2^, 2i, 3|, Sa, 3J, 3f, 3? ... 



b-' 2i H- IJ. 2.i 3, ^, ^, 4, 4 



Ir 2^ + 11 , 2i 3, 3i, 3f. 3^, 3i 



b* 1| + 1, 2i. 2^ 2|, 3.1, 3i, 3.1, U, 3 



b' 3i + IS. 2, 21, 2i. 3, 3i. 3, .3 



