Individually, ver}' little difference can be detected in these soils. 

 Chemical analysis at its best gives only a very rough approximation 

 of a soil's productive power, as, owing to its physical condition or the 

 state of combination of its constituents, an apparently very poor soil 

 may have available sufficient plant food to produce much larger crops 

 than one which, chemically considered, is its superior. Take numbers 

 50 and 51, for instance: Botli are from the same hacienda, both have 

 been cultivated for over fifty years, and in chemical composition they 

 are very nearly identical, yet number 50 is said to produce more than 

 three times as much sugar per hectare as number 51. Numbers 57, 

 58, and 59 are decidedly high in nitrogen, for this district. They 

 have ver)f probably been treated with animal manure. 



All these samples were obtained so late in the grinding season that 

 T had no opportunity personally to examine the cane produced in 

 this region, and the figures given as to the quality and quantity of 

 sugar produced from the different soils are simply approximations made 

 by the planters themselves. The general tendency in such cases is 

 toward over-, rather than underestimation. 



The quality of sugar produced in Silay is somewhat better than in 

 most other districts, it being largely "No. 1" and "No. 2." This in 

 itself is considered an indication of a not too fertile soil, since the 

 smaller canes produced yield normally a juice of higher purity and, by 

 the local process of manufacture, a better sugar than the more luxuriantly 

 grown canes of richer districts. 



For shipment to Iloilo the sugar is handled in bull carts to the 

 nearest lorcha landing on the coast at a cost of from 5 to 25 centavos 

 a picul, 0.79 to 3.96 pesos a metric ton, according to distance. As 

 Silay is situated nearer to Iloilo and is more conveniently located than 

 other sugar centers, the freight rate is correspondingly lower, averaging 

 15 centavos per picul, or 2.38 pesos per metric ton. 



Southward, along the provincial road from Talisay through Bacolod, 

 the capital of the Province of Occidental Negros, the land becomes 

 gradually poorer in quality, and this section is, at present, of relatively 

 little importance as a sugar producer, although in former times it 

 was quite extensively and profitably cultivated. The greater part of the 

 land around Bacolod, probably less fertile in the beginning, is much 

 further advanced along the road to complete worthlessness than that 

 of Silay, and much of it has already passed the stage where it will 

 yield returns sufficient to pay for planting in cane. From Bacolod, 

 extending nearly to the town of Bago, a distance of some 20 kilo- 

 meters, a strip of land is found which in the main is almost absolutely 



