198 STUDIES IN INDIAN SUGARCANE SEEDLINGS 



morphological characters, striping of the cane lias received some attention, 

 and it is shown that the seedlings of stii];ed canes are rarely striped, but show 

 a large range of single colours. Striping is, indeed, extremely rare in seed- 

 lings, and when present it is connected with stuping of some of the earliei 

 leaves. It appears to arise from one-coloured canes in tlie form of sports, 

 and several instances of this, whicli have been o])served, are recorded. The 

 well-known splitting up of striped canes when planted out into canes of the 

 component colours is illustrated by the mention of several varieties where 

 this habitually occurs. Of the two colours composing the striping, green is 

 far the commoner in such one-coloured sports. 



In conclusion, an attempt is made at correlating some of the morpholo- 

 gical characters of the seedlings with richness in the juice, dealing in each case 

 with seedlings of common parentage. It is specially important that such 

 correlations should be detected early in the life of the seedling, so as to avoid 

 rearing useless plants, but there are special difficnlties in the way, and the 

 principle has been adopted of trying first to find such correlations in mature 

 canes at crop time, and later, to attempt to correlate infant and mature 

 characters. The first step alone has been tried at present and the following 

 correlations have been studied between mature characteis and sncrose in the 

 juice, the results being given in the summary table appended :— correlation 

 between the amount of sucrose in the juice and various leaf and cane measure- 

 ments (width, length and module, or length divided by width) and colour of 

 cane, and correlations between leaf width and thickness of cane, tillering 

 power and total weight of seedling. In the studies on the colour of cane, 

 the interesting fact has come to light that, in coloured and striped canes used 

 as parents, approximately half of the seedlings are green. This appears to be 

 true of the coloured paieuts in 1912-11. although theie may be a largei 

 proportion where the parent itself is green. 



CoiMBATORE, 



December Srd, 1915. 



