58 AGRICULTURE IN THE TROPICS [PT. II 



the cane. Already several new varieties have been created, 

 which bid fair to give much better returns. It has also been 

 found that the cane occasionally bears fertile flowers, and 

 attempts have been made to gain the benefits due to cross- 

 fertilisation. Some of these crosses also promise well. 



The general indications point to sugar remaining a very 

 important industry in Java, Cuba, and other of the more 

 advanced countries, but to its more or less dying out, or becom- 

 ing a peasant cultivation, in the smaller West Indian Islands. 

 One of the most obvious improvements, in such countries as 

 India, is separation of the manufacture from the growth, and 

 specialisation of the former into very large factories, with 

 trained chemical assistance. Trial of new and improved canes 

 may be recommended, and the production of improved forms. 

 Careful study of rotation of crops upon sugar land is also 

 required, for sugar is a very exhausting crop, and requires to be 

 alternated with other things. Green manuring between the 

 rows of sugar might also be of advantage. In India a special 

 problem is presented, to grow sugar adapted to local needs, and 

 this the more as foreign and cleaner sugar seems to be becoming 

 annually more popular there. 



Other Sources of Sugar. Many of the palms have the 

 habit of flowering only at the end of their life, either in one 

 large mass of flowers, or in several consecutive ones. From such 

 palms, and from the Coconut and Palmyra and other palms 

 which do not do this, sugar is obtained in many tropical coun- 

 tries, by tapping the flower stalk, collecting, and evaporating, 

 the juice. A coarse brown sugar named jaggery is thus 

 obtained, and it is in general a sweet and good sugar, exten- 

 sively used in tropical lands. Careful comparative investigations, 

 and perhaps selection of seed, are badly wanted in reference to- 

 this industry, which is very important locally in the tropics, no 

 less than 480,000 tons of sugar being made annually in India 

 from palms. 



