^ THE CHINESE SUGAR-CANE. 67 



ani reports of it in the most favorable manner. 

 Out of a gallon of the liquid sap in the stem, 

 which he expressed. by the primitive contrivance 

 of a rolling-pin, he obtained, by boiling, a quart 

 of molasses, with very little impurity, and of 

 approved taste. The usual proportions of sugar 

 to sap lie between fifteen and twenty per cent., 

 the crystallizable sugar increasing with the de- 

 crease of the latitude. Beside this proportion of 

 sugar, there is an amount of perhaps five or eight 

 per cent, of uncrystallizable sap, from which a 

 very agreeable beverage can be made, and alco- 

 hol distilled more cheaply than by any other 

 method. This sap, strange to say, if set with 

 the oxide of tin, will dye silk of a beautiful 

 pink. As a food-plant for stock of all kinds, it 

 seems to overtop all we now possess, furnishing, 

 in fair soils, twenty-five tons per acre of excel- 

 lent fodder, every bit of which is greedily eaten 

 by animals. The seeds, too, by which the plant 

 is propagated — in this, unlike and superior to 

 the sugar-cane of Louisiana, which is raised by 

 cuttings — are fit for human food. At all events, 

 when ground and made up into cakes, after the 

 manner of linseftd cakes, they supply a good 

 material for fattening stock. The brush, or top 

 from which these seeds are taken, is not without 



