AGRICULTURAL INDUSTRIES 149 



A year later Elam Brown of Lafayette, Contra 

 Costa County, declared that he had "found no other 

 known plant at present grown in California that can 

 equal Chinese cane. Whether profitable as a plant to 

 be converted into syrup or not, its value as food for 

 stock will secure it a permanent place in our list of 

 valuable farm products." 



It is also rather clear that other sorghums also 

 reached California about the same time, "Egyptian 

 corn" or "dhoura" being one of them, for in 1858 

 Stephen Cooper wrote from his farm near Colusa: 

 "I grow Chinese sugar cane and Egyptian millet. 

 They are much alike, but I prefer the latter both 

 for grain and fodder." Some years later, on the pub- 

 lication of a full description of the plant, a San 

 Diego County farmer wrote that he had been grow- 

 ing it in a small way since 1863, and considered "one 

 acre of Egyptian w^orth 25 acres of barley because 

 one can irrigate that much from a well and keep two 

 or three horses and several milch cows every year 

 independent of drouth." In this way sorghum really 

 came to its chief use in California interior valleys 

 which a re-introduction of both brown and white 

 dhoura in 1874 direct from Egypt largely extended. 

 Isaac A. Grout, in January, 1878, wrote: "I was 

 first to introduce Egyptian corn to the Central Cali- 

 fornia Colony, but farmers outside planted it on 

 small scale with great success. I consider it the 

 best crop for the valley as it requires little water." 



It was probably at this pioneer colony of the Fresno 

 district that grain and forage sorghums first demon- 



