Cuban Cane Sugar 



cane had been believed, for ages, to 

 be sterile; no such thing as a seed- 

 ling of sugar cane had ever been 

 heard of. 



There is, be it known, a small 

 company of cultivated plants which 

 have almost altogether given up the 

 habit of seed-production. The horse- 

 radish, for example, has so long been 

 seedless that offers of $50,000 have 

 been made for a thimbleful of its 

 seed. Similarly, the common potato 

 has almost abandoned the habit, and 

 the marked improvement in our 

 potatoes as against those of thirty 

 years ago is due wholly to the fact 

 that some seed-bearing potatoes were 

 accidentally discovered. 



The cane, for ages, has been 

 propagated in the same way that the 

 potato has. When potatoes are 

 planted, one of the twenty-seven 

 eyes of a potato is merely placed in 

 the ground and left to sprout; when 

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