74 MEANS OF HASTENING MATURITY. 
lands produce this influence not only because they are 
better drained, and less charged with vegetable matter 
than low grounds, but also for the reason that they are 
more exposed and airy, and are not bathed in the moist 
atmosphere productive of rank growth so characteristic of 
the latter. The favorable influence of an upland soil ia 
quickening growth is much augmented if it declines gently 
toward the south, and the effect is further heightened if the 
cane-rows are made to follow the same direction, thus re- 
ceiving the vertical rays of the sun at noon, and giving 
them a more free access to the canes, before and after that 
hour, than could otherwise be obtained. It is a question, 
however, to be decided in each particular case, whether the 
benefit derived from running the rows north and south, on 
a surface inclined in the same direction, is not counter- 
balanced by the injury likely to be done the land by its 
greater liability to wash in heavy rains, and the danger of 
prostration of the cane by violent west winds; both of 
which evils would be avoided by marking ont the rows in 
the opposite direction. 
The observance of these precautions would remove the 
only objections which, in some seasons, might be urged 
against the general cultivation of the more slowly maturing 
but richer varieties of cane, in the vast district included 
between the summer lines of 70° and 72° as already de- 
fined. By these means also, in an extraordinarily backward 
or cold season, such as is sometimes likely to occur in any 
climate, a crop may be ripened when otherwise it would be 
impossible. 
