SUGAR ITS CULTURE AND MANUFACTURE. 



127 



ORATION 



DELIVERED BEFORE THE 



AGRICULTURAL AND MECHANICS' ASSOCIATION OP LOUISIANA, 



ON THE TWELFTH OF MAY, MDCCCXtV BY JUDGE P. A. KOST. 



Mr. President and Gentlemen, 



of the Agricuhural and Mechanics' Association — 



In rising to perform tlie duty which it has 

 been your pleasure to assign to me on this inter- 

 esting occasion, I am aware that you do not ex- 

 pect trom me an academical discourse upon the 

 importance and the dignity of Agriculture. — 

 Planting is not canned on with rhetoric, and if 

 our occupations be worthy of praise, it is in good 

 taste to let others speak it. You want facts, 

 careful observations, and practical results. You 

 are in search of knowledge. I am bound to say 

 that I have little to impart, but I am willing to 

 converse with you on the subject of our common 

 iiursuits; to direct you to the sources from which 

 I derive the limited infonnatiou I possess, and 

 to state the experiments by which I have at- 

 tempted to apply that information to the Agri- 

 culture of Louisiana, and the maiHjfacture of its 

 products. I do not, however, desire you to take 

 my results as rules of action, till you have verified 

 them, and if I can succeed in awakening a spirit 

 of in(iuiry which will induce you to do so, their 

 accuracy is of no consequence ; the discovery 

 that I was in error will bo as useful to you, as 

 the certaiuty that I was not. 



In a paper •which I had the honor to con- 

 tribute to the labors of the Association, last year, 

 I stated that the modem improvements in Agri- 

 culture were the result of recent and more ac- 

 curate knowledge on draining, plowing, manur- 

 ing, and interchange of crops, I then gave a 

 description of the process of thorough draining 

 as practised in Great Britain, and of subsoil- 

 plowing, which is the comjjlement of it. It is 

 unnecessary to revert to the subject here, except 

 for the purpose of stating tliat this process is 

 being rapidly introduced in the British West In- 

 dies, and that it has proved as beneficial there as 

 iu Europe ; so much so, that, although by the 

 prestjnt modes of cultivation, the average of rat- 

 tooiis and plants is seldom two thousand pounds 

 of sugar per acre, it is confidently believed that, 

 in lands thoroughly drained and sab-soiled, the 

 average will be five thousand pounds per acre. 

 I have no doubt of it, and when that system is 

 introduced here, the produce of a depth of six- 

 teen inches of dry alluvial .soil cannot be pre- 

 dicted ; nobody knov^'s to what size cane may 

 be made to grow, and how much sugw it can 

 yield. But, Sir, the process is expensive and 

 can only be introduced gradually. We must 

 for the present go on with our open drains, and 

 we can do passably well %vith them, provided 

 we have th<?m not over one hundred feet apart, 

 and not less than three feet in depth; ■with such 

 drains, made or tborougldy cleaned when the 

 land is planted in corn, the hardest claj-s, if not 

 too low, will be found in the subsequent years 

 to drain as well, to plow as deep and to pulver- 

 1213 as fine as light soils ; they will, moreover, 

 yield greater returns in sugar, 

 (283) 



Connected with the subject of draining, is that 

 of draining swamps and low lands, so as to ren- 

 der them fit for cultiv Aion, a subject of high im- 

 portance, since, besides the vast quantity of pub- 

 lic lands of that description in Louisiana, there 

 are few plantations on which the proportion of 

 these lands is not gi-eater than that of the culti- 

 vated fields. Some abortive attempts at drain- 

 ing low lands had before been made, but within 

 the last year, a few intelligent planters below 

 New-Orleans have taken the lead in good ear- 

 nest. Their draining machines are the most 

 perfect of the kind, and they have succeeded in 

 obtaining solid foundations for their locks. After 

 the heaviest rains, they ili-y their land in an in- 

 credibly short space of time, and their crops of 

 corn are now growing in marshes below the 

 level of the tides. Their success establishes the 

 fact that the low lauds may be cft'ectually drained 

 in large tracts, at an outlay which, with the Con- 

 gi-ess price of those lands, would not exceed 

 fifteen dollars per superficial acre. 



The food of plants and their modes of exist- 

 ence form the subject of averj' remarkable work, 

 that of Ju.stus Liebig, upon organic chemistry 

 applied to Agriculture. Others before him had 

 submitted to analysis trees, plants and the earths 

 in which they grow. Countless results of iso- 

 lated experiments had been collected, but they 

 were rather perplexing than practically useful, 

 till the master mind of Liebig constructed out of 

 them a rational and simple theory of vegetable 

 life. He had not all the facts necessary to make 

 his theory perfect; he was not aware, for in- 

 stance, of the action of galvanism and electricity 

 upon growing plants. But he did for Agricul- 

 ture what Lavoisier had done for chemistry; he 

 systematized what was kno\\n, and pointed out 

 to his successors the true path of discovery. — 

 Taking for granted that the substances which 

 are invariably found in n plant, are necessary to 

 its perfect development, he has shown which 

 of those substances were supplied by the earth, 

 by the atmosphere and by rain-water; he has 

 proved that pure vegetable mould, which has 

 been considered as the only agent of vegetation, 

 had in it but a secondary and not an indi^:pen.sa- 

 ble agency, and that the results assigned to it 

 were produced by carbonic acid, ^^'ater, and am- 

 monia, or rather nitrogen, and certain mineral 

 salts which the eartii sujiplies; he has discovered 

 that in sugar-bearing plants, carbonic acid is the 

 .source of saccharine matter, I cannot enter into 

 a detailed examination of tliis author's views, 

 but I will attempt to show you some of the re- 

 sults to which his theo."^- would lead in the cul- 

 tivation of the cane, and you will be pleased to 

 find that the practice of our good planters fulfils 

 all the es.sential requisites of science. 



Sugar-cane, analyzed with great care and in 

 various seasons by Mr, Avequiu, a per.son fully 

 competent to the ta^k, is found to contain in pro- 



