CHAPTER, XIITL. 
STORING THE CANE. 
The Sugar Factory, what Buildings necessary—Cane Sheds, their 
Construction and Arrangement—Trash Thatch a Convenient 
Material for Roofing, etc.—How used—Conditions essential to 
the Preservation of Cane—Length of Time during which it 
may be kept uninjured—Experiment—Uniformity of Tempera- 
ture necessary. : 
THE cane should be cut and removed from the field if 
ripe, immediately after the operation of stripping has been 
finished. If it has been planted early (see Chapter IV.), 
it will be in a fit condition for removal, ordinarily, before it 
has been touched by any frost capable of doing it harm. 
The imphees in general are more sensitive to cold than the 
Chinese variety at corresponding periods of their growth, but 
most of them mature earlier, and are not so much exposed 
late in the season. The fact that ripened cane will usually 
endure without injury the earliest autumnal frosts, should 
not induce any one by a system of late planting to run tlie 
risk of ruining his crop by exposure to the often intense 
cold of October nights, a calamity which, by pursuing a 
different course, might have been entirely avoided. 
The damage done to a cane crop by frost is to be meas- 
ured, however, not by the intensity of the cold, but by the 
rapidity of the subsequent change of temperature. A com- 
mon hoar-frost rapidly melting upon cane in the morning 
sun, does more harm than a ground freeze gradually abated 
8 ‘ (85) 
