the same time, it would not have proved that the 

 problem has been solved, and that there was in 

 the future any prospect of the sub-variety find- 

 ing an industrial application as a home sugar plant. 

 In the Agricultural Report of 1867, page 78, we read 

 the following, which is true : " Sorghum has suffered 

 a natural decline for several years, which has continued 

 causing despondency to producers." Many gentlemen, 

 however, of good faith in years gone by, thought they 

 obtained sorghum sugar, which we have great reasons 

 to believe was not the case. Mr. J. S. Levering, in 

 1857, published some startling accounts as to results 

 from sorghum, with a similar sub-variety of sugar cane 

 grown in Pennsylvania. But if there had been no 

 mistake as to results, why are these not put into prac- 

 tice to-day, now that the country is so much interested ? 

 and why should they have been confined to the early 

 stages of sorghum introduction, when but little or 

 nothing was known concerning it ? We regret that our 

 ex-Commissioner of Agriculture, Mr. Le Due, who had 

 this home sugar problem so much at heart, should have 

 been infatuated with a sample of sorghum sugar exhib- 

 ited at the Minnesota State Fair in 1877, and from 

 that time have abandoned a practical idea for a theo- 

 retical one, which up to the present day has amounted 

 to nothing. We read in his report for 1877, page 229: 

 "We cannot reasonably hope to find in beet culture a 

 sure compensation for diminished cane crop." We 

 beg to know why. Is it because inexperienced hands 

 have led to poor results ? Is it because we have 

 experimented, rather than adhered to conclusions 

 long since determined in Europe? Would not the 

 results obtained at the Delaware Beet Sugar Factory 

 in 1880, if they had had a longer duration, given a 

 practical hint as to possibility of finding in the beet a 

 sure compensation for the diminished cane crop ? 



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