INTRODUCTORY OBSERVATIONS. 197 
of Imphee, and comprised in botany under the name Hol- 
cus saccharatus (Linnzeus.) 
All of the seeds I planted, and made sugar from the 
whole fifteen different kinds, which enabled me to ascer- 
tian not only the saccharine value of each, but likewise 
the distinct peculiarities of the growth, seeding, etc., etc. 
The results of my observations and long-continued study 
of their habits and relative value will be found in the 
succeeding pages; but my manufacture was so complete- 
ly successful, that I left Natal and came to Hurope to 
prosecute my discovery, and introduce to the notice of 
the world the vast importance of the plants for ae 
manufacture. 
In recently looking over various botanical works, I 
find that attempts have been made by Signor Arduino 
and others to introduce varieties of this plant into Euro- 
pean cultivation, for the purpose of making sugar, but 
from some cause or other they had hitherto been perfectly 
unsuccessful. 
Nor am I any way surprised at these failures, believing 
that its success in Kurope very essentially depends upon 
the particular kind of imphee that is planted, and the 
next, upon a peculiar method employed in treating the 
juice. 
T also find it stated that the inhabitants of northern 
China use it in making a kind of sugar. 
This really may or may not be the case, for, in ibis 
of fact, almost the whole of northern China, together with 
the major portion of the great interior of that immense 
empire, may be fairly denominated a terra incognita to us ; 
a country so effectually sealed up, that, as I before ob- 
