SACCHARUM. 715 



ductive variety. Saccharumi molacewm Tussac, the Batavian Cane, is 

 also considered to be a variety ; but the large S. chinense Roxb. intro- 

 duced from Canton in 1796 into the Botanic Gardens of Calcutta, may be a 

 distinct species; it has a long, slender, erect panicle, while that of S. o^ci- 

 TUtrum is hairy and spreading, with the ramifications alternate and more 

 compound, not to mention other diiferences in the leaves and flowers. 



The sugar cane is cultivated from cuttings, the small seeds very 

 seldom ripening. It succeeds in almost all tropical and subti'opical 

 countries, reaching in South America and Mexico an elevation above 

 the sea of 5000-6000 feet. It is cultivated in most parts of India and 

 China up to 30-31° N. lat., the mountainous regions excepted. 



From the elaborate investigations of Hitter,^ it appears that Saccha- 

 t'UTn ojfflcinariv'rti was originally a native of Bengal, and of the Indo- 

 Chinese countries, as well as of Borneo, Java, Bali, Celebes, and other 

 islands of the Malay Archipelago. But there is no evidence that it is 

 now found anywhere in a wild state. 



History^ — The sugar cane was doubtless' known in India from time 

 immemorial, and grown for food as it still is at the present day, chiefly 

 in those regions which are unsuited for the manufacture of sugar.' 



Herodotus, Theophrastus, Senwa, Strabo, and other early writers 

 had some knowledge of raw sugar, which they speak of as the Honey of 

 Canes or Honey made by human hands, not that of bees ; but it was 

 not until the commencement of the Christian era, that the ancients 

 manifested an undoubted acquaintance with sugar, under the name of 

 Saccharon. 



Thus Dioscorides"* about a.d. 77 mentions the concreted honey called 

 'EcLKxapov found upon canes (e-TrJ twv KoXafioov) in India and Arabia 

 Felix, and which in substance and brittleness resemble salt. Pliny 

 evidently knew the same thing under the name Saccharum ; and the 

 author of the Periplus of the Erythrean Sea, A.D. 54-68, states that 

 honey from canes, called craKxapi, is exported from Barygaza, in the 

 Gulf of Cambay, to the ports of the Red Sea, west of the Proniontoriuni 

 Aroniatum, that is to say to the coast opposite Aden. Whether at 

 that period sugar was produced in Western India, or was brought 

 thither from the Ganges, is a point still doubtful. 



Bengal is probably the country of the earliest manufacture of sugar ; 

 hence its names in all the languages of Western- Asiatic and European 

 nations are derived from the Sanskrit Sharkard, signifying a substance 

 in the shape of small grains or stones. It is strange that this word 

 contains no allusion to the taste of the substance. 



Candy, as sugar in large crystals is called, is derived from the 

 Arabic Kand or Kandat, a name of the same signification. An old 

 Sanskrit name of Central Bengal is Gura, whence is derived the word 

 Gula, meaning ravj sugar, a term for sugar universally employed in 



^ Erdkuude von Asien, ix. West-Asien, phets Isaiah (ch. xliii. 24) and Jeremiah 



Berlin, 1840. pp. 230-291. (ch. vi. 20) as a commodity imported from 



' The learned investigations of Heyd, a distant country, has been the subject of 



Levaniehandel, ii. (1879) 665-667, afford much discussion. Some have supposed it 



exhaustive information about the medicinal to be the sugar cane ; others, an aromatic 



history of sugar. grasa (Andropogon). In our opinion, there 



'The production which the English is more reason to conclude that it was 



translators of the Bible have rendered Sweet Cassia Bark. 



Cane, and which is alluded to by the pro- *Lib. ii. c. 104. 



