102 TIMEHRI. 
the great majority of the scientific experts who are con- 
stantly engaged in the study of the plant have these 
recommendations received much support. The praétical 
planter knows from long experience that a top derived 
from a small, hard, fully matured cane is far more certain 
to grow than one derived from a fine large but frequently 
immature cane. He is also well acquainted with the 
fa&ts that the influences of soils and seasons govern the 
relative saccharine contents of the cane, and he has not 
found that tops obtained from canes grown in Barbados 
with a total sugar contents of from 14} to 15 per cent 
have produced richer canes than tops from canes grown 
in the colony and containing only about 13 per cent of 
total sugars. This last experience has been many times 
repeated and on large scales. The scientific expert, 
aware of the faéts upon which the pra€tical planter relies, 
while he willingly admits that, if from some cause inherent 
in the cane itself, sports were produced of relatively 
high saccharine strength, tops taken from such sports 
would probably produce canes having the same property, 
can not admit that when a cane, from differences due toage, 
to position in the stool, or to soil or manurial conditions, 
becomes of saccharine strength above the average of its 
kind, there exists any likelihood of a cutting from the older 
or otherwise favoured shoot producing a new plant of sac- 
charine richness above the average. That considerable 
differences do occur in the richness of individual canes is 
in accordance with the experience of all who have had 
cause to study the composition of the sugar cane, but 
such differences are almost invariably traceable to con- 
ditions of age or to conditions exterior to the plant. I do 
not deny that from time to time, from causes inherent to 
