PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR STEMS OR LEAVES. 155 



wild state, and undoubtedly belonging to the genus Sac- 

 charum, grow in India, except one in Egypt.^ Five 

 species have since been desci'ibed, growing in Java, New 

 Guinea, Timor, and the Philippine Isles.^ The proba- 

 bilities ai-e all in favour of an Asiatic origin, to judge 

 from the data furnished by geographical botany. 



Unfortunately no botanist had discovered at the time 

 when Ritter wrote, or has since discovered, Saccharum 

 officinariiin wild in India, in the adjacent countries or 

 in the archipelago to the south of Asia. All Anglo- 

 Indian authors, Roxburgh, Wallich, Royle, etc., and more 

 recently Aitchison,^ only mention the plant as a culti- 

 vated one. Roxburgh,' who was so long a collector in 

 India, says expressly, " where wild I do not know." The 

 family of the Graininece has not yet appeared, in 

 Sir Joseph Hooker's flora. For the island of Ceylon, 

 Thwaites does not even mention the cultivated plant."* 

 Rumphius, who has carefully described its cultivation 

 in the Dutch colonies, says nothing about the home 

 of the species. Micpel, Hasskarl, and Blanco mention no 

 wild specimen in Sumatra, Java, or the Philippine Isles. 

 Crawfurd tried to discover it, but failed to do so.^ At the 

 time of Cook's voyage Forster found the sugar-cane only 

 as a cultivated, plant in the small islands of the Pacific.^ 

 The natives of New Caledonia cultivate a number of 

 varieties of the sugar-cane, and use it constantly, sucking 

 the syrup from the cane ; but Vieillard '^ takes care to say, 

 " From the fact that isolated plants of Saccharum offici- 

 narum are often found in the middle of the bush and 

 even on the mountains, it would be wrong to conclude 

 that the plant is indigenous ; for the.se specimens, poor 

 and weak, only mark the site of old plantations, or 



* Kunth, Enum. Plant. (1838), voL i. p. 474. There is no more 

 recent descriptive work on tlie i'auiily of the Graminece, nor the genu?! 

 Saccharum. 



* Miquel, Florw Tndim Batavce, 1855, vol. iii. p. oil. 



2 Aitchison, Catalogue of Punjab and Sindh Plants, 1869, p. 173. 



* Thwaites, Enum. PL Zeyloniw. 



* Crawfurd, Indian Archip., i. p. 475. 

 Forster, De Plantis Esculentis. 



' Vieillard, Annales des Sc. Nat , 4th series, vol. xvi. p. 32. 



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