Notes on the Society's Work in 1897-1918. xxix. 



cane was produced that after its first period of excessive vegetative vig- 

 our had passed its characteristics were fixed for all time. Soon after the cul- 

 tivation of the new varieties had been extended over large areas it became 

 painfully evident to the majority of planters that their characteristics are 

 not fixed and that in many instances characteristics which in the earlier 

 years promised to make a variety of sugar-cane of high value both in 

 field and factory, were the first to fail. This tendency towards senile 

 degeneration renders it necessary to raise new varie'ies of seedling canes 

 year after year in the hope of having fairly good varieties available to 

 replace others which may gradually fail. 



Experience has proved to us that it is very easy indeed to raise new 

 varieties of sugar-canes which are of high promise as plant-canes. It has 

 further proved to us that it is relatively difficult to obtain sugar-canes 

 capable of producing good crops as plant canes and as first ratoons ; and 

 that it is exceedingly difficult to produce varieties which can be relied on 

 to give satisfactory crops of plant canes, 1st, 2nd, and 3rd ratoons. 

 Few indeed of the enormous numbers of new varieties which are now 

 raised each year in various parts of the tropics, will do this and the prob- 

 lem of getting good varieties for cultivation under the long-ratooning 

 system necessitated here by our deficient labour-supply and dependence 

 on hand instead of on mechanical cultivation becomes an exceedingly 

 difficult one. Elsewhere with the exception of Cuba sugar-canes are as a 

 rule only cultivated as plants or as plants and 1st ratoons. Hence as the 

 best varieties raised in Barbados, Java and Hawaii have been chosen for 

 their suitability for short ratooning periods it is rarely that a sugar-cane 

 suitable for our long ratooning conditions can be imported from else- 

 where. 



The most successful method we have tried here for raising new 

 varieties of sugar-cane of promise is based on the facts that a sugar-cane 

 for successful cultivation on our heavy clay soils must be of well marked 

 vegetative vigour and that the range of variation in the saccharine content 

 of seedling sugar-canes is very great, its relative sugar-content being a 

 fairly fixed characteristic of any variety. We endeavour to raise as many 

 seedlings as we can from varieties of proved vegetative vigour and select 

 from them those having both well marked vegetative vigour and relatively 

 high saccharine content. By this method we raised from D 625 the 

 seedlings D 118 and D 419, the areas under which have increased from 

 2 acres and 1 acre respectively for the crop of 1911-1912 to 2,710, and 

 1,360 acres respectively for this year's reaping. 



We have been advised time after time to give up our proven methods 

 and to confine our efforts towards raising canes by cross-fertilisation. If 

 we had in this colony sugar-canes of single parentage showing fixed 

 characters and through their purity of origin having little or no tendency 

 to mutation or sporting that advice would be excellent. In India and 

 to a less extent in Java sugar-cane varieties of high purity of strain 



