345 
early shoots are hard and fibrous, and very different from the large 
succulent shoots which are afterwards produced and which lengthen 
into the juicy reed whence the crop is made. In ordinary and favor- 
able years, with light showers during the first six months, the young 
canes make no marked progress, but the roots are increasing in 
length and strength, and in the months of July and August the plant 
begins to sucker, as it is called, and to put out the shoots which form 
the canes, but these make no great progress in length before the end 
of August and in’ September and October, when the rains usually 
come to their aid at the critical time. They then grow with extreme 
rapidity, are extremely tender and succulent, and a short spell of dry 
weather at that time usually does serious mischief. If, however, 
the first six months of the year are wet, and the young canes are 
excited to an abnormal rapidity of gr owth, they are liable to be seri- 
ously affected by any interval of dry weather in the middle of the 
year. Moreover, rainy weather in the reaping season retards the 
manufacture, and, especially in the black soils which contain an 
excess of iron variously combined, causes a great loss from the 
rotting of the canes at the roots. 
An illustration of this is afforded by the rainfall and crops. of 
1860 and the two following years. 1860 was a model year; the rain 
fell at the right time, and’ in exactly the average quantity, 57.91 
inches, of which 12.46 fell during the first six months. The crop of 
1861 would undoubtedly have reached 55,000 hogsheads but for the 
wet reaping season of that year, in which the rainfall of the first 
six months was 31.93 inches—6.35 in April, 8.01 in May, and 8.01 
in June. The consequence was that the crop only reached 49,745 
hogsheads, and although so much rain fell throughout the year 
(73.82 inches), the following crop of 1862 was only 46, 120 hogsheads. 
In the same manner the ‘heavy rainfall of 1855 (77. 31 inches, of 
which 30.68 fell in the first six months) was followed in 1856 by 
only a moderate crop (43,077 hogsheads), although the reaping 
season of that year was most favorable. The result, however, is by 
no means constant. 
The sugar-crop records go back to the year 1806, but the returns 
are only interesting since 1847, which was the first in which the crop 
recovered from the effects of emancipation in 1839. Since 1847 
there has been a steady increase until the crop has attained nearly 
twice what it was before emancipation. There has also been a slow 
increase in acreage of canebrake; the size of the hogsheads has been 
gradually increasing since 1806; there has been a decided increase 
in the usage of guanos and other foreign manures; there has also 
been a very decided improvement in the machinery and _ processes 
for crushing the cane and manufacturing the sugar. 
a Although Governor Rawson was evidently conscious of these progressive 
changes, and in fact, mentions most of them, yet he does not approximately 
eliminate their effects by taking the difference between the individual crops 
and a progressively increasing ideal normal, but takes the difference between 
the simple average and the individual years; his results, therefore, need to 
be computed and all the data for this purpose are given in the tables here- 
with.—C, A. 
