226 THE AFRICAN SUGAR CANE. 
3. Fine, average cane juice contains eighteen per cent. 
of sugar, not more. 
4, A good average crop of sugar canes will weigh from 
twenty-five to thirty tons per acre. 
5. Canes are apt to degenerate so fast, that constant 
recourse is had to the expedient of exchanging plant 
tops between estates very distant from each other. 
6. The cane rattoons in twelve months, generally, from 
the time of cutting; and each time it rattoons the canes 
are less juicy, and contain a greater amount of woody 
fiber in proportion. 
These points must be well considered : 
1. During the eighteen months’ growth what casualties 
may not occur to destroy, or, at least, very much injure, 
the crop: storms, severe drouth, fire, and lastly, white 
ants! And what sugar planter knows not the dire ex- 
tent of these liabilities ? 
2. The large proportion of woody fiber contained in 
rattoons, and even in plant canes, naturally reduces very 
much the per centage of juice; but all rattoons do not so 
abound in woody fiber. 
3. So alarming was the degeneracy of the sugar cane 
in Jamaica, that its Royal Agricultural Society and the 
Society of Arts in London sought all over the world for 
sugar cane seed, in the hopes of remedying this threaten- 
ing evil. 
Now, on the other hand, let us look at the imphee in 
respect to those identical points. 
1. It takes, as I have already said, from three months 
to four and a half months, according to the kind planted, 
