40 THE CHINESE SUGAR CANE. 
for the institution of experiments with the new plants as 
we could have had; for, whereas, the plant requires a 
warm, dry, season to develop its excellences, and to 
attain a rapidity of growth, we have this year been 
subjected, since the earliest portion of spring, to a con- 
tinued series of drenching rains and untimely showers. 
The soil, in consequence, has been kept cool and moist, 
and the temperature of the air has been so reduced that 
even the corn crop in the vicinity of our farm is very 
much more backward than it should be at this season of 
the year. One of the largest planters in the southern 
states informed me, a short time since, that he had 
frequently seen corn in the month of June, so tall that 
the tassels would be above his head when he rode 
through the field on horseback; but that in July of the 
present year, his crop was but four feet high. 
There will, therefore, necessarily be much apprehen- 
sion existing among the experimenters of the sorgho, as to 
its maturity, andit may even be that, in case the frosts set 
in earlier than usual in the fall, a large proportion of the 
plants throughout the United States will not ripen their 
seed-heads; but because they do not, it is no index of 
what we must expect, were the season but auspicious. 
The experiment has been tried in France of using 
excessive irrigation to produce an increased growth of 
stalks; and as in that case, although the growth was 
obtained, yet the proportion of the sugar in the juice 
was in consequence materially reduced, we may like- 
wise expect that the rain of the present season will pro- 
duce, should we have warm and favorable weather till 
the close of the season, a great growth of stalks, but a 
