74 TILLERING IN INDIAN SUGARCANES 



elsewhere. The frequent advantage of plants so situated should be carefully 

 noted, as suggesting that full use is not always being made of watering facilities. 

 There is still a good deal of work to be done with regard to the effect of the 

 duty of water on the number of canes to be obtained under varying conditions 

 of sqil and manuring. 



Manuring naturally has its effect on the number of canes produced as 

 well as their individual weight and the richness of their juice. A careful 

 study of this effect has been made by Kilian, who desired to know the best 

 manures to be applied to the three cane varieties which appeared to be suited 

 to the different soils in his estate at Poerwodadi in Java.^ Although his 

 research was limited to a purely utilitarian problem, the care with which his 

 experiments were conducted renders them valuable from the scientific point of 

 view, and their limited range is of no disadvantage in this respect. The 

 experiments were with Black Cherihon and J . 247, which were canes growing 

 well in his conditions, and consisted of a series of plots to which were added 

 varying amounts of sulphate of ammonia, superphosphate and cattle manure. 

 Besides studying general yield and other matters, he counted the number of 

 canes at harvest, and this renders his paper of interest to us. Briefly the results 

 were as follows : — 



In Black Cherihon, with the same amount of sulphate of ammonia, increas- 

 ing doses of superphosphate gave a gradual rise in the weight of cane and of 

 sugar per acre ; also there was an increase in the number of canes, but this was 

 less regularly the case. With increasing doses of sulphate of ammonia, the 

 numbers of the canes varied irregularly, whereas the weight of canes and of 

 sugar gradually increased. With the addition of a suitable amount of cattle 

 manure to a moderate amount of both of these artificial manures, there was 

 a distinct rise in the numbers of canes in the plots, as well as weight of cane 

 and of sugar at crop time. The experiments with J . 247 seem to have been 

 confined to the ammonium sulphate series, and the results were similar to those 

 with Black Cherihon. 



These experiments were carried out on soils varying from heavy black 

 clay to thin dry loam, and we see that the addition of quantities of suitable 

 manure, especially cattle manure, lead to a distinct increase in the number of 

 canea. It seems probable that similar results would be obtained in other 

 places, once it is determined in what direction the manurial constituents of 



^ Kilian, J. B?mestings-eu plantverband-proeven op cle S. F. Kanigoro, oogst 1908-J*, 

 ArchieJ v. d. Stiikerind. in Ned. Ind., Vol. XVIII. p. .506, 1910 



