84 SUPPLEMENT. 
will not only give more juice for distillation and sugar making, but 
will not so readily be prostrated by the winds of our western prai- 
ries. The outer covering of the imphee stalk is thinner than that of 
sorgho, and is consequently easier to crush in the mill. 
Frequent allusion is made in the preceding pages of this work to 
the practice of cutting off the seed heads to increase the secretion of 
sugar. I saw many stalks at Mr. Peters’ thus treated, which had been 
utterly ruined. The energy of the plant is so great, that when its 
forces were diverted from the elaboration of starch in the seeds, the 
butt at each joint of the stalk threw out short stems, which attained a 
length of some eighteen inches, and attempted to produce miniature 
seed heads. The result was, that the vitality which would in the 
natural course of growth have produced a perfect plant, with a full 
crop of ripe seed, was exhausted in the production of monstrosities. 
It is sufficiently well attested that the ripening of the seed does not 
interfere with a maximum yield of sugar. | 
Mr. Peters found that sorgho planted on the 15th March ripened 
within a week of that planted on the 15th May. He had some imphee 
ripening which had been planted only ninety days. 
On Governor Hammond’s place the Boom-vwa-na and Nee-a-za-na 
ripened the earliest. The former grows to a height of eleven feet, but 
the latter only seven. This brevity of stalk is, however, compensated 
for by the number of suckers which grow from the stool. The Oom- 
se-a-na and En-ya-ma were thought to be best for syrup making. The 
Koom-ba-na grows about ten feet high, and is very excellent. A new 
variety, the Sorgho-ka-baie, promises to be very excellent. I should 
be willing to plant, to a moderate extent, any one of eight or ten 
varieties which were saved by Mr. Wray, and sold to Mr. Moore. 
NEWS OF THE IMPHEE FROM AFRICA. 
In the month of September last there appeared in the New York 
Journal of Commerce a letter from Rev. H. A. Wilder, an American 
missionary at Umtwalume, in Caffraria, in which Mr. Wilder states, 
that considerable quantities of excellent sugar have been made from 
