52 SOEGHUM. 



Dr. S. Wells Williams, the distinguished Chinese scholar, in a com- 

 munication to the Committee of the National Academy of Sciences, 

 engaged in the investigation of the " Sorghum Sugar Industry," in 

 reply to the question, "Is it known how long sorghum has been culti- 

 vated in China as food, or for making spirits ?" says : 



To this question it is hard to make any satisfactory reply, inasmuch as no 

 Chinese books contain illustrations of grains or plants used in ancient times, 

 nor are there found among their monuments pictures of these similar to repre- 

 sentations of ancient Egypt, Assyria, Greece, etc. 



As to the history of this grain in China, Dr. Bretschneider, of the Russian 

 legation at Peking, and foremost among the authorities upon Chinese botany, says 

 (concerning the plant called Shu) : " This cereal is >eparately described in the 

 Pun Tsao (Chinese Herbal), published a. d. 1570. The grain is called Hwang- 

 mi, and is said to possess much glutinous matter. It is used for manufacturing 

 alcoholic drinks. This corn was known to the Chinese in the most ancient 

 times. It seems to me that the meaning of the character Shu, in ancient days, 

 was not glutinous millet (as Dr. Legge states in the Shu King), but rather sor- 

 (jJium, as Dr. Williams translates."* If this deduction is true, the cultivation 

 of this plant dates from about 2000 b. c. The precise uses of this grain in an- 

 cient times can only be inferred. 



If the identity of the Shu (mentioned in the classics) with sorghum could be 

 proved beyond question, this grain would rank in age as grown in China with 

 any in the world. 



Sorghum is seldom used in China now as food for man; the great food staples 

 of Northern China are wheat, pulse, maize, and Italian millet (Setaria). Buck- 

 wheat, panicled millet, and the sweet potato, maj' be included as secondary sta- 

 ples. Rice is imported to the north from the southern provinces. 



I have never seen the broom corn grown in China. 



The twenty or more varieties which President Angell brought from China 

 could, probably', be increased in number if the collection were made from a more 

 extended area. 



The uses of this plant for fuel, tend to increase attention to the development 

 of its stalk rather than the grain. 



The plant often attains a height of 15 or 16 feet. The common practice of 

 stripping off all the leaves within reach upon the growing stalk, for feeding cat- 

 tle, increases very materially its woody fiber. Cutting the stems while in their 

 prime of growth, and chewing them green, as southerners do the sugar-cane, is 

 not unusual in the north. 



The Chinese do not possess the art of refining sugar or making syrup to per- 

 fection. Even in the cane-growing districts their employment of molasses is 

 small; none of this is ever made from sorghum, to my knowledge. 



*As to the sugar-cane, the same writer adds: "I have not been able to find any allu- 

 sion to it in the most ancient of Chinese works (the five classics); it is first mentioned 

 by writers of the second century b. c. * * * One says, 'it grows in Cochin Chinn. 

 It is several inches in circumference, ten feet high, and resembles bamboo. The juice 

 is very sweet, and, dried in the sun, changes into sugar.' " 



