158 STUDIES IN INDIAN SUGARCANE SEEDLINGS 



as far as possible without any rooting or shooting, and are such as would 

 develope into healthy canes at crop time. Those which are abnormal in any 

 way are rejected, and the same precaution is taken at crop time, the idea 

 being to try and obtain such results as would be given by a mass of healthy, 

 well-grown canes. But, besides this, attention has been paid during the 

 past season to the fact, pointed out in the recently published Memoir on Punjab 

 Canes, 1 that, in some varieties, there are usually two kinds of cane in each 

 clump, differing not only in certain morphological characters, but also in the 

 time of origin and therefore in age. In the paper referred to, there was no 

 opportunity of testing the chemical character^ of the juice of these two 

 classes of canes (termed " early " and " late "), but this has been observed 

 during the current (1915) cropping season. The results of this study, carried 

 out at my request by Mr. T. S. Venkataraman on some of the varieties growing 

 in the Cane-breeding Station, are detailed below. It will be seen that they 

 agree closely with those obtained in the Punjab case, in that this peculiarity 

 (of two classes of canes being present at crop time) is confined to certain 

 varieties of canes and is not appreciably present in others, suggesting a pro- 

 found difference in the mode of formation of the branches, a subject which is 

 receiving farther attention. As detailed in the paper referred to, the early canes 

 are characterised by commencing with short, narrow joints which gradually 

 increase in length and thickness upwards, whereas the late canes commence 

 with long joints of full thickness which are succeeded by others which become 

 shorter and thinner upwards. This has been our main criterion, and another 

 character of the early and late canes has also come out strongly, in that the 

 early canes have many joints while the late ones have few. Mr. Venkataraman 

 has found that the cane varieties examined on the farm may be divided into 

 the following two classes as regards the formation of early and late canes in 

 each clump. 



(I). Varieties in which early and late canes can be separated easilv. It 

 would appear that in these varieties there is a continual production of canes, 

 which may be divided into early, intermediate, and late. To this class belong 

 Pansahi, Chynia, Yuba, Maneria, Sanachi, KaJin and the Pansahi-yiko 

 Ketari, all of them belonging to the Pansahi grouji of Ganna canes of North 

 India. A photograph of Ketari is appended in wliich the differences between 

 early and late canes can be clearly seen (Pi. XXIX). Taking the length 

 of the lowest joints as the criterion, we find a close relation between this 



1 Barbel', Ibid p. 38, d siq. 



2 I hid, p. 41. 



