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The World's Commercial Products 



Photo by W. G. Freeman 

 A GERMINATING SUGAR-CANE TOP 



whilst in many sugar-producing countries all the best 

 land is already in use, and intense cultivation is the 

 rule. The land may be broken up into ridges and 

 furrows, or so-called " holes," made, as adopted in 

 Barbados and Mauritius, to prevent washing of the soil 

 by rain. Machinery is extensively employed in 

 Louisiana and other places where labour is expensive 

 or scanty. 



The number of years for which ratoons are main- 

 tained naturally depends again upon local circum- 

 stances. In many countries the cane will ratoon with 

 sufficient vigour for about five or ten years. There 

 are examples, however, that the planter may reap 

 from the same field much longer, for fifty or sixty 

 years or even more, but then the climate and the soil 

 must be very favourable indeed. In other places, e.g., 

 several parts of the West Indies, the fields are rarely 

 left for more than three years without replanting, or 

 again only plant-canes and first ratoons are taken, or 

 in other cases the canes are planted fresh each year. 

 This is especially the case where the plantations have 

 been cultivated for some time and the conditions are 

 accordingly less favourable. In Java, for instance, 

 experience has shown that after the first year the 

 quantity as well as the quality of the crop diminishes. 

 For this reason the plants are not only renewed every, year, but they are also planted 

 in a different field the second year, so that rotation of crops is followed and the 

 cultivation is made as intense as possible. Sugar-cane is followed frequently by beans 

 and maize, these by rice. Then beans and maize again, and still another rice crop 

 before sugar is ' once, more cultivated on the same land, three years after the immediately 

 preceding sugar-crop. People learned these methods of intense cultivation from a treatise 

 by Don Alvaro Reynoso, Professor of Agricultural Chemistry in Cuba, which was translated 

 into Dutch in 1865. Reynoso chiefly advised a thorough breaking up of the soil sixteen 

 inches deep, planting at proper distances, and systematic draining. An enormous amount 

 of care and attention has recently been devoted in Java, the West Indies, Hawaii, the 

 United States of America, etc., to the problems of the manurial requirements, etc., of 

 the cane. Analyses show that a crop of sugar-cane of about thirty tons to the acre contains 

 approximately thirty pounds of nitrogen, seventy-five pounds of potash, and twenty pounds 

 of phosphoric acid, all of which has been removed from the soil. If the soil is very rich in 

 these substances there may be no need to replace these essentials in the form of manure for 

 some period. Sooner or later, however, on most estates there comes a time when the available 

 stock of nitrogen, potash, and phosphates is exhausted, or depleted to -a sufficient extent to 

 interfere with the successful cultivation of the crop. The planter then has to face the serious 

 question of how to apply these valuable constituents in the most useful and economical 

 manner. 



As an instance of the careful manner in which practical questions such as this are dealt with 

 by the modern scientific departments of the colonies, we may take the case of the investiga- 

 tions conducted by Dr. Francis Watts, of the Imperial Department of Agriculture for the West 

 Indies, into the manurial requirements of the sugar-cane in the Leeward Islands, i.e., in 

 Antigua, St. Kitt's, and Nevis. For the last six years very careful experiments have been 

 carried out on actual sugar estates, with the general result of ascertaining that an application 



