224 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



ren, in their earlier experiments in its use, and how much more 

 abundant were its resources as known to us through our longer 

 experience. " Take it away ! " said an Irish lord, after making 

 his first experiment of its value in a half-baked cake, made of 

 meal and water without salt ; " take it away, it was evidently 

 made only for the hogs ! " The experiments of the Irish people 

 at large, proved, to their own satisfaction, that their enemies 

 across the water were trying to poison them by wholesale ; but 

 one editor, who advanced in his experiments somewhat beyond 

 his fellow-countrymen, discovered that corn meal was good for 

 fattening swine ! 



In forming an opinion of the capacities of the Chinese sugar 

 cane, may we not reasonably anticipate the maximum of the 

 products that have thus far been obtained ? All objections to 

 its culture, which the climate and cost of growing present, are 

 certainly legitimate, and ought to enter on the debtor side ; but 

 while passing judgment on it, let us remember not to lay to its 

 charge results which originate in the ignorance and inexperience 

 of the community. Let us examine a moment into the widely 

 different results quoted above. AVhat can be more obvious than 

 that the quantity of sap expressed from any given number of 

 canes, will depend on the perfection of the machinery used for 

 this end ? or that the quantity of molasses obtained from equal 

 quantities of sirup, will depend on the different degrees of 

 maturity to which the several lots of cane from which they were 

 expressed have reached ? At our late exhibition, four lots of 

 molasses were presented, three of which had been burnt in the 

 process of manufacture, and were consequently of a bitter taste, 

 while the fourth was nearly equal in flavor to the sirup of com- 

 merce ; who would say that this burnt molasses was not the 

 product of the inexperience of the community rather than of 

 the cane ? It is so evident that the quantity of sirup obtained 

 must depend so much on the means employed to crush the stalk, 

 and the quality of the molasses depend so much on the skill 

 exercised in the process of manufacture, that we feel quite safe 

 in assuming the greatest quantity of sap obtained and the best 

 quality of molasses thus far manufactured, as data of what this 

 cane is equal to in the North. In the instance where the cane 

 was unpalatable to stock, was it fed while young, or when 

 matured, and the case so hard as almost to turn the edge of a 



