240 TEINIDAD. 



to resist the droughts of March, April, and May ; but, on the other 

 hand, they are not fit for cutting in the following year. The 

 best planting season is from October to January. During the 

 dry months planting may be experimented in the low damp 

 localities. 



I have said that Trinidad sugar is of inferior quality ; and 

 yet, unless we improve that quality, we cannot expect to obtain 

 remunerative prices. The adoption of improved apparatuses and 

 methods is, by far, the safest plan. But improved apparatuses 

 are costly, and a series of unfavourable years and unremunerative 

 prices have had the effect of impoverishing the planters, who, 

 however willing they may be to introduce improvements, find it 

 impossible to do so; nor can they expect, under the circum- 

 stance, assistance from capitalists. They should not despair, 

 however, and relinquish all hope. Let them try the possible. 

 In Barbadoes, and Porto Rico, in Brazil, they do manufacture, 

 with a common set of coppers, moscovado, which sells readily and 

 with profit. What can prevent us doing the same ? I see no 

 reason why, with care and attention, we should not obtain 

 similar results. 



If we could obtain from the cane a juice composed solely of 

 water and sugar, how easily could we, with the aid of heat, 

 eliminate the former to obtain the latter ! Unfortunately, cane 

 juice is not so simple in its composition, as it contains, in a 

 greater or less proportion, all the matters which its organs require 

 for their development and healthy growth — those which its 

 apparatuses needed for the normal performance of their functions; 

 those generated during the process of vegetation. Not only those 

 substances may vary with the different varieties of the plant, with 

 cane grown in different soils and under different atmospheric 

 influences, but they may also vary in the same cane, as is easily 

 ascertained by analysis. The unripe part of a cane — the top, for 

 instance, differs in many respects from the lower or ripe part ; 

 it contains those bodies which are found in young or unripe cai 

 And one may form an idea of that different composition 

 referring to the analysis made by Payen : — 



Ripe cane — water, 71*04; sugar, 18*00; alluminous ai 

 other azotised substances, 0*55 ; salts, 0*28 ; other matters, 0*37. 



Unripe cane — water, 79*70 ; sugar, 9*06, or 50 percent, less ; 

 azotised substances, 1*17, or more than 50 per cent. ; salts, 1*95 ; 



