48 MANURES. 
On the contrary, when the perfection of the saccharine 
matter in the juice is the desideratum, the supply of ammo- 
niacal manures, during the period of rapid growth, should 
not be increased beyond the amount which the plant al- 
ways naturally derives from the soil and air. When this 
precaution is not observed, a large but weak and watery 
stem shoots up, the juice of which abounds in albumen and 
impurities, is insipid to the taste, deficient entirely in 
crystallizable sugar, ripening late or not at all, easily de- 
composed by frost, and comparatively worthless. Cane 
grown under such conditions is forced into an apparently 
luxuriant but really imperfect development; it is more lia- 
ble to disease, and the stem, lacking the stiffness necessary 
to sustain its weight, seldom escapes prostration by the 
winds. 
In ammonia, therefore, we have an agent, the undue use 
of which would soon reduce the sugar cane to a condition 
not superior as to the quality of its juice, to that of broom 
corn. Happily, however, there are other substances, which, 
as we shall see further on, exert a no less decided antago- 
nistic influence, promoting the formation of sugar and 
encouraging a healthy growth. 
Yet there is a period at which experience has proved 
that animal manure in very limited quantity may be ap- 
plied with advantage to cane; namely, during that stage 
of its existence immediately succeeding germination ;—-but 
it should be applied only as a top-dressing, or so sparingly 
as not to influence the process of sugar formation when the 
stem has grown out, and the cells are being stored with 
juice. During active vegetation the bulk of the nitro- 
genous (albuminous) matter is found in the young and 
rapidly growing parts,—when not supplied in too great 
quantity it is attracted toward those parts exclusively. It 
plays a most important part in inducing those changes in 
