ORIGIN AND HISTORY. 17 
From the venerable Father Du Halde we learn that 
there existed, even in his time, in China, in the province 
of Se Chuen, situated in the western part of the Empire, 
a cane which produced excellent sugar, and it is sup- 
posed by Dr. Sicard that this is the same plant which 
has been brought to Europe. Léon de Rosny, a dis- 
tinguished philologist of France, has, at the request of 
M.G. de Lacoste, searched the Chinese and Hgyptian 
Archives in the Imperial Library at Paris, and speaks 
as follows concerning the Chinese Sugar Cane or Sorgho: 
JAPANESE ACCOUNTS OF THE SORGHO. 
“The treatises on agriculture, and various other 
works, in the Chinese and Egyptian department of the 
Imperial Library, contain several chapters exclusively 
upon the sorghos; but their authors do not seem to 
have divided the varieties in such a manner as to make 
them correspond with those which we recognize in 
Kurope. Besides the common Chinese and Japanese 
names, Sorgho is attached successively to other 
graminea which should not be, according to our system, 
embraced in this species. The Japanese, who, in respect 
to Agriculture, are eminently more advanced than all 
other people, even than the Chinese themselves, cultivate 
the sorgho to extract from tt sugar and alcohol; but in 
the works which we possess, no mention is made of the 
coloring principle which is extracted from its seed. 
However, it is probable that it 1s not unknown to them, 
and that if we had at Paris a richer collection of 
Japancse books, we would find in them valuable and 
