396 TRANSACTIONS OF THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 



Cane sn.2:ar, pounds 302,205,000 



Cane molasses, g'allons 1(1,337,080 



Sorghum molasses, gallons 1,235,025 



Maple sugar, pounds 88,863,884 



Maple molasses, gallons 1,944,594 



Honey, pounds 25,028,991 



The rapidly increasing culture of the Chinese sugar cane is supplying a 

 great want. From a remote period sorghum has been cultivated in Egypt 

 and India as a forage plant, and as food for animals and man. In 1786 

 Signor Pietro Arduino of Florence, attempted to introduce the Imphee from 

 Caffraria into Italy, for the purpose of making sugar, but doubts exist 

 whether the plants on which he experimented were the same as the sorgho 

 introduced from China, for he speaks of the seeds being of a clear light 

 brown color while the seeds of our Chinese variety are of a very deep pur- 

 ple almost black. His description nevertheless exactly corresponds with 

 the appearance of the seeds of Mr. Wray's Imphee, and we are led to 

 believe that it was in reality the African, and not the Chinese sugar cane 

 which was cultivated by him at Florence. 



It is now generally understood by botanists that the sorgho and imphee 

 are not different varieties of the same plant but two different species. 



The first appearance of the sorgho in Europe dates back no further than 

 the year 1851, at which time the Count de Montigny, being Consul of France 

 'at Shanghai in China, sent, in compliance with official request, a collection 

 of plants and seeds which he found in China and which he thought would 

 succeed in his own country, among which was the Holcus Saccharatus, 

 under the name of the sugar cane of the north of China. The first intro- 

 duction of the sorgho into America was made by D. Jay Brown, Esq., a 

 member of this Institute, tlicn employed in the Agricultural Department of 

 the U. S. Patent Office at Washington. O/i his return from Europe in 1854, 

 where he had been sent to purchase seeds, he brought with him a quantity 

 of the seed of the Chinese sugar cane, which he had procured from M. Vil- 

 morin, a celebrated seedsman of Paris; and soon after other patriotic citL 

 zens imported large quantities of the seed for distribution; but the feeling 

 of suspicion with which all new seeds are more or less viewed tended to 

 confine the experiment of its cultivation to a few enterprising farmers of 

 our country. 



The chief clerk of the new department of agriculture at "Washington 

 (Mr. McCormick) attended a meeting of the Farmers' Club a few weeks 

 since, stating that from statistics received by the department the amount 

 of sorghum molasses made from the crop of 1862 would not fall short of 

 forty millions of gallons. 



The imphee before mentioned was introduced by Mr. Leonard Wray, an 

 English gentleman, well known by sugar^planters as the author of several 

 works on sugar planting. 



In 1850 he left the East Indies for the Cape of Good Hope, whence he went 

 to Kaffirland, and found the Zulu Kaffirs cultivating the imphee around 

 their huts, not for the purpose of manufacturing crystalized sugar, or 

 obtaining any other of its products with a commercial view, but merely for 

 the purpose of chewing and sucking the stalk. He quickly saw of what 



