VARIETIES OF THE CANE. 



Home of the Sugar Cane. The place whence the cane was 

 introduced has been the subject of speculation and controversy, India and the 

 South Pacific being the places most in dispute. In 1891 Kobus 18 remarked on 

 the differences between the Ukh canes of India and those cultivated in Java ; 

 this difference is apparent from Hadi's description of the former, and is so 

 pronounced that it seems fair to suggest that the cultivated varieties of 

 cane (elsewhere than in India) and the Ukh canes are not merely varieties 

 but distinct species. 



Of the varieties cultivated elsewhere than in India it is certain that the 

 Otaheite cane (or canes), the Tanna canes, the Cavengerie cane, and the 

 Escambine canes are indigenous to the South Pacific; the Cheribon canes 

 have certainly been known in Java for generations, but the writer has never 

 found any authoritative statement that they are the indigenous. The literature 

 of the cane shows, too, that these Cheribon canes have also been known in the 

 South Pacific from early times, and even the name ' Otaheite ' is in some 

 places (cp. supra) attached to these canes. In addition, the writer has been 

 authoritatively informed that canes of the Cheribon type were known in India 

 as Otaheite canes at the end of the eighteenth century. There seems, then, 

 much reason to suppose that the Cheribon canes are not indigenous to Java, but 

 originated from the South Pacific ; if, as seems reasonable, this speculation 

 connecting these canes with the South Pacific is correct, then all the standard 

 cultivated varieties of cane originated in the South Pacific, that is to say east 

 of Wallace's line, and they form, at the very least, a type of cane very far 

 removed from those found to the West. 



The statement that the 'Bourbon' cane came to that island from the 

 Malabar coast is often found ; the original statement the writer has never been 

 able to trace, and at the most the statement only implies that the vessel that 

 brought the stock to Bourbon cleared from that locality. 



The evidence that the sugar cane is indigenous to the New World seems 

 quite unsatisfactory. 



REFERENCES IN CHAPTER IV. 



1. 8. (7., 220. 



2. Stubbs' Sugar Cane, p. 66. 



3. 8. C., 273. 



4. Formen und Farben Saccharum officinarum. 



5. Bull. 26, Agric. H.S.P.A. 



6. The Practical Sugar Planter, pp. 1-18. 



7. Das ZucJcerrohr, p. 124. 



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