THE GREAT MILLET 



The Most 

 Suitable Form 



Dried Fodder. 



Storage. 



SORGHUM 



VULQARE 



Poisonous Property 



irrigated crops and should be sown any time between November and 

 February. Mollison then observes (I.e. 16) : " No other crops can 

 compare with the Sorghums in yielding a heavy weight of green fodder 

 of good quality. Succulent fodder of this class is specially valuable in 

 the hot weather for all farm animals, and hundi and Mlbondi are the 

 most suitable varieties yet found for the purpose." 



Ensilage. Mukerji (Handbook Ind. Agri., 255) says that sorghum 

 fodder may be sown " in May, and sowing should continue through June 

 and July, that there may be a succession of fodder crops of first, second, 

 and third cuttings from July to March or April, a portion of which can be 

 dried and preserved for use from April to June. The dried stalks should 

 be stacked and thatched." Mollison describes the manner of preserving 

 sorghum fodder followed in the Southern Maratha country. " The bundles 

 are built into neat oblong heaps in the field. Each heap is built with a slope 

 from the ground to the ridge, and when complete is protected along the 

 sides, ends and top with big lumps of black soil, which are built or packed 

 closely together. These heaps when complete look like large boundary 

 marks. Cattle can freely graze over the stubble, but can get no access 

 to the stored fodder." Voelcker has expressed himself as opposed to 

 the introduction into India of the European methods of siloing sorghum 

 fodder, and the reports published by the Experimental Farms of India 

 are as a rule unfavourable. 



Poisonous Property. It has been already observed that the name 

 bikhonda given to the wild S. halepense may be intended to denote the 

 well-known poisonous property which that grass sometimes manifests. 

 It may perhaps be accepted as a further proof of the descent of at least 

 the fodder-yielding cultivated forms of Sorghum vulijare from that 

 wild plant, when it is added that under certain circumstances the cultivated 

 sorghums also become poisonous. In this connection attention may be 

 invited to the fact that the Hemp Drugs Commission in their Report 

 (1893, i., 156), and more recently the Excise Commissioner of the Central 

 Provinces, have made known a new use of the root of the judr plant that 

 seems to have escaped the observation of previous writers (see p. 758). 

 It would appear that it is employed to increase the potency of Indian 

 hemp (bhang and ganja) as well as of country liquor, but is viewed as too 

 powerful to be used by itself. A poison residing in the root is certainly 

 remarkable and worthy of the most careful and searching future inquiry, 

 and it may be added that it is said to occur also in the roots of rice, but 

 so far as judr is concerned, is reported as found only in the cold-weather 

 or ringni (Central Provinces) and shidlu (Bombay) varieties. 



The occurrence of this poisonous property is, moreover, often simultaneous 

 over a large tract of country, appearing and disappearing within certain fixed 

 limits of time and locality. It would thus seem that the effect of climatic dis- 

 turbances in modifying the quantity and quality of the crop has not received the 

 degree of consideration which it demands. Pease (Agri. Ledg., 1896, No. 24, 

 225) has recorded the death of a large number of cattle at the Sirsa fair, due 

 to their having eaten judr stems. The young plant has frequently been 

 found to be poisonous to cattle in Egypt, the West Indies, United States and 

 elsewhere. Dunstan and Henry have examined young sorghum plants from 

 Egypt and India and have shown that these when ground up in contact with 

 water yield pruesic acid, and that the prussic acid originates from the interaction 

 of a crystalline glucoside dhurrin and the unorganised ferment emulsin, both of 

 which occur in the plants and are brought into contact in the manner just 

 indicated. In Egypt the amount of dhurrin, and consequently the quantity 

 of prussic acid obtainable, is at a maximum when the plants are about 12 inches 



1040 



D.E.P., 



vi., pt. iii., 

 304. 



Poisonous 

 Property. 



Boot used with 

 Indian Hemp. 



Poison 

 Simultaneous. 



Young Plant. 



Prussic Acid. 



