14 



THE CUBA REVIEW 



wlio8c mcinl)ers luul l)een making t^ugar I'roia 

 sorghum for generations, and that they alivays 

 accomplished this by preventing the production 

 of seed by the plants devoted to this puipose, 

 and this alone might have justly been con- 

 sidered a very strong evidence of the truth 

 of the principle, even if it had not been further 

 confirmed later, by Professor Stewart's ex- 

 periments with maize, whereby he shows that 

 by preventing the formation of the ear the 

 sugar content of the plant is developed and 

 increased. This has all been repeated with 

 success by the Agricultural Department of 

 the United States. 



1 have no special interest in sorghum or 

 need of defending it; nor do I pretend to 

 prophesy that it will ever become the thu'd 

 great provider of oiu" sugar su]5]3lies. Not 

 because I am fully convinced that it could 

 not by proper means become svxch in time if 

 need were. Having our sugar-cane, which by 

 centuries of cultivation in ways that if not 

 superlatively wise have adapted it more or 

 less to our uses, and also the Dacota beet, 

 that by a long course of scientific training 

 has been brought so near to perfection that it 

 will yield one quarter of its weight in sugar— 

 which will in all probability make it insuper- 

 able — there seems to be scarcely room for 

 any other aspirant, especially as we have the 

 nipa and other palms to draw upon if we wish. 

 What I do seek to do is to save a principle that 

 appears to be so fully confirmed from being 

 as completely ignored, when it may in the 

 future be a great aid to progress in some other 

 field. 



It might, however, be fiu'ther claimed in 

 favor of sorghum that it is not altogether 

 impossible that the sugar-cane may originally 

 have been very little, if at all, superior to 

 sorghum as a yielder of sucrose. Before the 

 possibility of producing sugar-cane from seed 

 was discovered, I wrote an article in Spanish, 

 in which I tried to show that this plant must, 

 in the earliest epoch of its cultivation, have 

 been reproduced from its seed because, if it 

 had not possessed the great advantage of an 

 easy method for distributing its "offspring" 

 by means of the wind, it would have been 

 crowded out of existence by more favored 

 plants before man began planting it. Also, 

 when the discovery was made, as with many 

 others, that the eyes on the stalk would also 

 sprout, this method was adopted because it 



was seen to be in some respects more conven- 

 ient — and if so, more convenient than what if 

 not its reproduction from seed? If it be true, 

 then, that plants when continuously repro- 

 (huH'd from cuttings give seed more and more 

 redu(!ed in mnii!)er and size until they become 

 sterilized, or nearly so, we cannot positively 

 conclude that sorghum- — ^if it also be true 

 that in Japan it has been grown from the stalk 

 as cane is- — cannot be made as good a sugar- 

 producing plant as the sugar-cane until it 

 has been planted on similar lines for some 

 years, or until we have thoroughly tried accel- 

 erating its evolution in this direction by arti- 

 ficially unx)eding its production of seed by 

 seed selection and other means. 



No less an authority than Dr. Wiley informs 

 us that sorghum plants with a minunum of 

 seed always give a maximum of sugar, and 

 this trait alone would appear to justify the 

 belief that the total elimination of its seed 

 would not only largely mcrease the sugar 

 yield, but also free its juice of the noxious 

 starchy matter, evidently more or less in- 

 duced by the production of the seed. 



It would, perhaps, be worth while to begin 

 a series of experiments at some tropical agri- 

 cultural station, if with no better aim than 

 the mere solution of a scientific problem, to 

 attempt just the reverse of this with our 

 sugar-cane by the reproduction of seedlings 

 from their own seed, generation after genera- 

 tion, to see if any tendency existed that 

 might in tune give the cane a gram crop like 

 that of the sorghiun. 



JAMES H. DOD. 



Santa Clara, Cuba. 



— From Tropical Life, London. 



CENTRALS CONCHITA AND ASUNCION SOLD 



The Cubans take much pride, and it is 

 justified, in a recent transaction which was 

 consummated in Havana bj^ Sr. Jose Lopez 

 Rodriguez, m his securing from Juan Pedro 

 Baro, the valuable sugar centrals and prop- 

 erties " Conchita '' and " Asuncion " located, 

 respectively, at Alacranes, province of Matan- 

 zas, and Quiebra Macha, province of Pinar 

 del Rio, for the sum of $3,500,000. Sr. 

 Rodriguez is a native of Cuba, which increases 

 his share of gloiy all the more, and is con- 

 sidered a power in the Cuban financial world. 



