a Fr Pe Peer a es 
OR 
AFRICAN SUGAR CANE. 
THERE can be no question that many useful arts and 
manufactures, known and practiced by the ancients, have, 
from certain untoward causes, been lost to the world, and 
continue so to this day. Many, again, have been redis- 
covered from time to time, and are thus restored to the 
present generation; holding rank, however, more fre- 
quently in the character of new and original discoveries 
and inventions, than as mere restorations to human 
knowledge. 
Not a few have been restored to us by purely acci- 
dental circumstances; others have been strictly the dis- 
coveries and inventions of practical and gifted men of 
modern times, the results of sagacious observation, skill- 
ful experiments, and practical deductions, apart from any 
previous traditionary ideas on the subject; whilst others, 
again, have been the valued reward of intense study and 
unwearied endeavors to obtain those results which tradi- 
tion, or perhaps, even existing specimens, told them had 
been accomplished in bygone ages, and by which they 
were incited to attempt their rediscovery. 
9 [193] 
