CHAPTER IV. 
VALUE AS A FORAGE CROP—TESTIMONY OF CULTIVATORS. 
THE plan I purpose to pursue in discussing the claims 
of the sorgho to the attention of our farmers, is entirely 
different from those of other investigators who have pre- 
ceded me; for I shall at first consider its value as a 
forage crop and a cereal, and endeavor to show that, even 
if we could not make from it sugar, syrup, alcohol, or any 
other of its products, we still have reason for congratu- 
lating ourselves upon its introduction. If this be success- 
fully accomplished, it is plain that, whatever may be the 
fluctuations in its other yields of profit, it will have a 
regular commercial value as a means of fattening stock, 
and in this single department be a source of large wealth 
to the nation. It may possibly be that some of my more 
speculative readers may prefer to omit the sober consid- 
erations of this chapter, and at once pass over to the 
more alluring phases of the following one; but I have 
too vivid a recollection of former vegetable wonders not 
to seek to prove to our farmers that, in cultivating the 
Chinese Sugar Cane, they will be more fortunate than 
they were with the Morus multicaulis, which, after the 
subsidence of the silk fever, was found to be unfit for 
anything, except an application of the pick ax and plow. 
Although I think the sorgho is destined to rank alongside 
the sugar cane, Indian corn, cotton, and hemp, in the list 
of our industrial plants, I firmly believe that it will be con- 
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