IMPROVEMENT OF THE SUGAR CANE. 85 
advance of that in the British colonies; although our 
colonies working on the classical British system of agri- 
culture;—profiting by the expensive mistakes and the 
accumulat.d experience of our forefathers, whilst ne- 
gleéting or not fully profiting by the results of modern 
agricultural research,—produced probably higher yields of 
canes per acre than did any of their competitors, with the 
exception of the extraordinary yields of from seven to ten 
tons of sugar per acre reported from time to time as 
being attained by the cultivation of the Lahaina (Bourbon) 
cane in the Sandwich Islands. 
I purpose this afternoon, as far as I can in the 
brief limit of a paper, to bring before the members of 
the Royal Agricultural and Commercial Society, in a 
popular form, the results obtained in recent years by 
applications of science in the field and the laboratory 
towards increasing the agricultural yield of the sugar- 
cane. I shall confine myself wholly to the agricultural 
side of the question, this society possessing many mem- 
bers far better qualified to speak upon the manufaéture 
than | can be, and | will bring before you the subjeé& 
which we are about to discuss arranged under the fol- 
lowing heads :— 
I. The search for Senate i varieties of sugar cane. 
(a) by the examination of varieties obtained from 
other countries. 
(6) by “ bud variation.’’ 
(c) by “ grafting.” 
(da) by sele&tion of tops for planting from canes of 
high saccharine strength. 
(e) by raising new varieties by means of the seed. 
of the cane, 
