been, probably, less the cause of this neglect than ethnological and 

 agricultural prejudices in favour of the species first selected or 

 introduced. 



Next to the surpassing value of Grass foliage and seeds in the 

 mass as food, the production of Sugar is no unimportant feature 

 in our economical estimation of these plants. This substance, of 

 which, according to computation founded upon the quantity annu- 

 ally imported for home use in this country, every individual among 

 our vast population consumes about a quarter of a hundredweight 

 yearly, though chiefly prepared from a single species, Saccharum 

 officinale, exists in variable proportion in most Grasses; a fact 

 readily perceptible by the taste, on masticating the joints of their 

 stems, in which parts it is usually present in greater abundance 

 than elsewhere, though occasionally constituting a very marked 

 proportion of the substance of ripened Grain. In that of Barley 

 especially, it equals seven or eight per cent. Notwithstanding 

 these circumstances, however, as Sugar ranks, in combination 

 with other proximate principles, as a nutritive matter belonging 

 to vegetation collectively ; apart from the cultivation of the above- 

 mentioned species of Saccharum, and that of three or four other 

 Grasses of warm climates, for the purpose of obtaining it in large 

 quantities for economical use, its presence is not to be regarded as 

 forming an essential characteristic of the Grass tribe. 



The species of Saccharum are numerous, amounting to between 

 thirty and forty, as described by botanists from different parts of 

 the world, though our present rules for generic distinction are too 

 artificial and arbitrary to admit of this estimation of their number 

 being considered determinate. Cultivation has not hitherto been 

 extended to more than four or five members of the genus, near 

 allies, if not indeed mere accidental varieties of the common Sugar 

 Cane, all of which are indigenous to India or China, though, as 

 tropical Grasses, other species are found in the West Indies, South 

 America, Africa, and the islands of the Pacific Ocean. 



