44 METHOD OF CULTIVATION. 
should immediately succeed the second plowing. At this 
time, also, the cane should be thinned out if necessary, so 
that the stalks may stand at an average distance of not more 
than 6 to 8 inches apart in the row; or if in hills, 2 feet 
or 23 feet apart, with not less than four to six strong stalks 
in each hill. These will tiller or “sucker” often to twice 
or thrice their original number, and when early planting is 
practiced, as above recommended, the side shoots will show 
scarcely any difference, either in size or in their period of 
ripening, from the central stalks. Nor are they at all in- 
ferior in the saccharine quality of their juice, while the 
. general yield is vastly augmented. 
The surface of the soil should be suffered to remain in 
the condition in which it was left after hoeing until the 
first period of growth (see page 33) is past, and the roots 
have begun to extend themselves throughout the portion 
previously loosened and thrown up by the plow. The 
shooting forth of the stalk, indicating a sudden reflux of 
nutritive matter from the root upward, is the signal for a 
third plowing, by which a fresh portion of earth from be- 
tween the rows is thrown toward the ridge. If the dis- 
tance between the summits of the ridges is 34 feet and the 
original ridges were 18 inches broad at the base, and 
two slices of fresh soil of 6 inches each in width were 
thrown in by the second and third plowings, a vertical sec- 
tion of the ridge will present a slightly rounded outline, 
with a broad, shallow drain*between it and the contiguous 
ones. The wood-cut represents a vertical cross section of 
Wy 
WY 
: a 
ra ho 
w oP he hi iS 
the ridge as formed at the time of planting the seed, fig. 1, 
