SORGHUM. 



The Chinese and African Sugar Canes. 



VARIETIES, CULTURE AND MANUFACTURE. 



The name Sorghum in its comprehensive meaning embraces not only 

 the sugar producing varieties (Sorghum Saccharatum), but, also, the 

 numerous grain bearing plants (Sorghum Vulgare). Sorghum is one of the 

 oldest plants known to history. There is good reason for believing that it 

 was cultivated in China as far back as 2,000 years before the Christian era, 

 and it has certainly been grown in various parts of Asia and Africa from a 

 remote antiquity. Its cultivation in Europe is of much later date ; but there 

 is some evidence to show that it has been grown in Italy, and other parts of 

 Europe from as early as the first century. It has been cultivated from the 

 earliest times for bread, feed for horses and cattle, for alcoholic drinks, and 

 for its saccharine properties. 



Under the general name of Sorghum in this treatise, we include only the 

 different sugar producing varieties of the Sorgho and Imphee canes. The 

 Sorghos are commonly known as the Chinese canes, because the varieties 

 first introduced into this country came originally from China; whilst the 

 Imphees, first coming from Africa, are known as the African canes. The 

 Sorghos and the Imphees are supposed to have had a common origin, and 

 although the place of their nativity is not certainly known, it is believed by 

 most authorities to have been India. 



Sorghum was first introduced into France in 1851 by the Count de 

 Montigny, then French Consul at Shanghai, China, who sent from there' to 

 the Geographical Society of Paris a quantity of Sorghum seed, together 

 with a collection of other seeds and plants. In the same year Mr. Leonard 

 Wray, whilst visiting a colony in Natal, iii Africa, found there a plant called 

 by the Zulu-Kaffirs, Imphee, "the sweet plant." He collected seed of all 

 the varieties known to the natives, fifteen in all, and planted some of each, 

 and sent some to the Geographical Society of Paris. Mr. Wray was so 

 impressed with the importance of his discovery, that he soon went to Europe, 

 for the purpose of making known to the world the value of the plant. It is 

 mainly to his efforts, and those of Mr. Louis Vilmorin, of Paris, that is due 

 the general recognition of the value of Sorghum that soon prevailed. 



