156 FUNDAMENTALS OF AGRICULTURE. 



practically eliminated at this point. In the event of a 

 killing frost during the harvest period, the cane is cut 

 without the removal of the leaves and tops, preserved 

 by placing in windrows, and removed as the needs of 

 the factory demand. In most instances an effort is 

 made to do as much of the planting as is possible be- 

 fore the grinding season. After the harvesting begins 

 labor is no longer available for planting cane, and that 

 cane desired for further planting is preserved in wind- 

 rows covered with earth for early spring planting. 

 It is the usual practice to grow two crops of cane : 

 that is, plant cane (from planted stalks), and first 

 year stubble (growth from the live underground joints 

 of the preceding year's crop), and then to produce an 

 intervening crop of corn, with cowpeas sown between 

 the corn rows, before replanting cane. This crop of 

 corn and cowpeas serves as a soil renovator, and at 

 the same time furnishes necessary feed for the plan- 

 tation mules. 



Fertilizers are applied to both plant and stubble 

 cane. Those most commonly used are cotton-seed 

 meal combined with acid phosphate and tankage alone. 

 Application of 500 pounds to 750 pounds to the acre 

 is practiced. 



Manufacture of Syrup, Sugar and Molasses. In 

 no industry is the manufacture more closely allied to 

 agriculture than in sugar making. The raw mate- 

 rial being of too perishable and too bulky a nature to 

 permit of its distant transportation, the plantation 

 maintains its own factory or else sells its production 

 of cane to a nearby central factory. The cane is 

 ground between massive rollers which bring out the 

 juice. The juice is treated with sulphur and after- 

 wards with lime, and is then heated. It is then sepa- 

 rated from its precipitated impurities by decantation 

 and filtration, after which it is concentrated by boiling 

 in vacuum apparatus of special construction until it is 

 a mass of sugar and molasses. This molasses is sepa- 

 rated from the sugar crystals by purging in high speed 



