826 APPENDIX. 
make their preservation more certain and easy ; finally, the prepara- 
tion of small clippings artificially dried, might perhaps pay for the extra 
expenses which their preparation would cause, by enabling us to manu- 
facture throughout the entire year. All the questions which attach 
themselves to this order of facts, are so much more important to study, 
because if they obtain a good solution, they would result in remedying 
what may at present be regarded as the weakest point of the sorgho, 
the preservation of the stalks during a sufficiently long time to accom- 
plish a regular manufacture.* 
THE SORGHO IN AMERICA. 
Wishing to know something of the results of experiments instituted 
upon this plant in our own country, I have written to Messrs. Parker, 
White, & Gannet, seedsmen, of Boston, who are correspondents of 
Monsieur Vilmorin, and have the seeds of the sorgho for sale, and they 
answer as follows : 
Boston, November 22, 1855. 
Mr. H. S. Oxcort, 
Dear Sir,—We have ourselves cultivated the Holcus saccharatus 
the past season, for the purpose of supplying ourselves with seed. It 
grows readily, and ripens the seed with as much certainty as Indian 
corn. 
There is very little probability that it will be grown in New Eng- 
land for the purpose of making sugar, but we esteem it highly as an 
article for feeding cattle, cutting it up for a green crop as soon as it is 
four or five feet high, when it has more foliage than corn, and is full 
of sweeter juices. 
We believe it can be profitably grown for the production of sugar 
in some of the northern slave states, and may possibly, when it shall 
have been once fairly introduced, take the place of the common cane 
* This tendency to decay is the chief objection urged by those who oppose the eul- 
tivation of green corn for fodder, and it seems reasonable to suppose that those precau- 
tions which ensure the preservation of the corn stalks, would be equally applicable to 
the sorgho.—TRANS. 
