412 THE UNIVERSE. 



old historian Diodorus Siculus relates something analogous 

 with respect to Arabia. 



The sugar-cane (Saccharum officinarum), originally a 

 native of India and Arabia Felix, fills its pith with the 

 alimentary substance which has been for so many ages ex- 

 tracted from it. 



Strabo, in his " Geography/' speaking of the productions 

 of these two countries, and Dioscorides also, in his great 

 repertory of medical lore, evidently make mention of this 

 grass. The former says it is a reed which yields honey. 

 Dioscorides is still more explicit. According to him, the 

 reeds of India and Arabia yield a congealed thick honey as 

 hard as salt, which crumbles between the teeth, and which 

 is called sugar. According to the learned, the Chinese have 

 understood the culture of the sugar-cane and the art of ex- 

 tracting its produce from the remotest antiquity. 



Belon even says that this plant is mentioned in a host of 

 Indian and Arabic works ; and Humboldt seems to confirm 

 all this by attesting that it is found drawn upon the oldest 

 China porcelain. 



Thus, then, there can be no doubt that the sugar-cane is 

 indigenous in the Old World, and that its culture goes back 

 to a very remote period. 



But it was towards the thirteenth century that the mer- 

 chants who imitated Marco Polo, by bringing the products 

 of India overland to Europe, introduced the plant into Nu- 

 bia and Egypt, from whence, in the fourteenth century, it 

 was carried to Sicily, Syria, and Madeira. From thence it 

 was finally transported to America soon after its discovery. 



Another grass maize (Zea Mays), also contains sugar in 



