180 THE CHINESE SUGAR CANE. 
in the greatest proportion, under the footstalks of the 
leaves. This vegetable wax—cerosie, the French call 
it—is similar in its composition to the wax produced by 
bees; it is, however, dry, hard, and may be pulverized ; 
fusible at 90°, and if mixed with purified tallow, and 
made into candles, burns with a clear brilliant ight. It 
is employed for this purpose by the imhabitants of 
the north of China. Mr. Hardy, the Director of the 
Government Nursery in Algiers, makes a calculation as 
to its value per acre, by which he shows a net profit of 
thirty-six dollars, to be added to the other profits given 
by the cultivation of the sorgho; but Ido not see how 
we can, for a moment, adopt these views as applicable to 
our conditions of climate and prices of labor. In Algiers, 
Mr. Hardy could secure the service of Arab boys and 
women at a very low price; and in China, the labor of 
a man is remunerated with only a few cents per day; 
but in our country, we cannot hire a laborer for less 
than a dollar a day. It seems to me that, taking into 
consideration the fact that the cerosie is not secreted by 
the stalks so abundantly as it is in Algiers, we cannot 
spare the laborers from more important duties, to go over 
the field and carefully scrape the wax from the outside 
of the stalks. T’o obtain a small quantity, to illustrate 
my lectures befcre the Legislatures last winter, I em- 
ployed one of our pupils, for nearly half a day, and the 
little suecess that he met with, convinced me at the time, 
that any calculations of its becoming an important com- 
mercial commodity in our own country, were futile, un- 
less, perhaps, by either steaming the stalks in a vat after 
they were cut, or by the use of some machinery, the wax 
