PREFACE. Vv 
curing a stock of cuttings to renew the exhausted plantations of Lou- 
siana. 
It can scarcely be a matter of surprise, therefore, that when it be- 
came bruited abroad, through our public press, that there had been 
introduced from France, through the United States Patent Office, a 
new plant, which was said to have been in common use in North China 
for the production of sugar, and to be capable of immediate acclima- 
tion, even in ovr more northern states, one simultaneous desire should 
have possessed the farmers of all portions of the country to experiment 
for themselves with the precious seed, and produce, if not for sale, at 
least for themselves and their families, a supply of the agreeable sugar. 
Thus, then, we have seen the news passed with rapidity, from paper 
to paper, throughout the land; enterprising seedsmen have imported 
large quantities from France, issued their advertisements, and orders 
and letters of inquiry poured in upon them in one unbroken stream, 
until the season of planting had passed. The United States Patent 
Office has itself distributed one hundred thousand papers of the seed ; 
the large crop of Colonel Richard Peters, of Georgia, has been dis- 
posed of in a similar manner ; and considering the other amounts dis- 
tributed, I think to be entirely within the bounds of moderation in 
stating, that there are now under cultivation in the United States, fifty 
thousand acres of Chinese Sugar Cane. 
The interest in the question has been materially heightened, and the 
hopes of success considerably increased by the arrival in this country, 
from Europe, of Mr. Leonard Wray, formerly a planter at Natal. This 
distinguished sugar planter discovered, on the south eastern coast of 
Africa, fifteen varieties of the Holcus saccharatus, cultivated by the 
Zulu Kaffirs, under the name Im-Fé, or Imphee, from which he made 
sugar in large quantities ; and which, after considerable difficulty and 
expense, he succeeded in introducing to the notice of European agri- 
