ORIGIN AND HISTORY. 27 
that in the year 1854, in the month of September, an 
application from Mr. Wray for a patent on his process 
was filed at our Government Patent Office by Charles F. 
Stansbury, Esq., acting in his name; but an error having 
been made in his application, it was withdrawn until a 
more favorable occasion should present itself In the 
year 1856, Mr. Wray obtained the large silver medal of 
the Haposition Universelle at Paris, for his imphee sugar, 
alcohol, seeds, and plants, and the French government, 
moreover, granted to him twenty-five hundred acres of 
land in Algeria,to encourage in that colony the establish- 
ment of this important cultivation. 
INTRODUCTION OF TUE SORGHO INTO AMERICA. 
In the month of November, 1854, D. Jay Browne, Esq., 
of the United States Patent Office, returned to America 
from Europe, bringing with him a quantity of the seed 
of the Chinese Sugar Cane, which he had procured from 
M. Vilmorin, the gentleman previously referred to. 
These seeds were distributed to various persons through- 
out this country; but the feeling of suspicion with 
which all new things are more or less viewed, tended to 
confine this experiment of cultivation to a few of the 
more enterprising farmers, until the formal report, ad- 
dressed by Gen. J. H. Hammond, late Governor of South 
Carolina, to the Secretary of the Beach Island, South 
Carolina, Farmers’ Club, awakened general attention, 
by showing the successful results of his own cultivation 
and manufacture. Upon its history, in the southern 
states, I do not propose to dwell at length, because the 
