SORGHUM. Ill 



CHAPTER X. 



MEANS, JOHNSON, EGYPTIAN GRASS. 



SORGHUM— (Halpentse.) 



Rises with a stem from four to twelve feet high, according to the 

 soil on which it grows, erect, smooth ; leaves linear, flexuous, graceful, 

 curling down at the end like corn; flowers in a panicle at the top, at 

 first green, changing gradually to a yellow. 



A few years before the late war, Capt. Means, of South 

 Carolina, who commanded a trading vessel to the Mediter- 

 ranean Sea, brought from Egypt a lot of seeds, from which 

 he got a spoonful of seeds of an unknown kind. He handed 

 them to some one with a request that they be sown in his 

 garden. They came up and proved to be the grass named 

 above. It was of an unknown quality, and but little atten- 

 tion was paid to it, until it nearly took his garden. He had 

 the plants dug up by the roots and thrown into a neighbor- 

 ing gulley, where they soon began to grow, stopping the 

 wash and spreading all around. It was now seen for the 

 first time that it was greedily eaten by stock. This was 

 suggestive in a country where all the hay had to be im- 

 ported, and so seed was gathered and sown, and the wind 

 spread the seed all around from the growing grass. It 

 puzzled farmers to know it from corn, and it was often left 

 for corn in the field when thinning out, so that the negroes 

 abbreviated the local name and called it "mean grass." 



In 1860, Capt. Johnson, of Marion Station, Alabama, 

 paid a visit to some relatives and heard of this grass, that 

 had in the meantime acquired a great reputation, and on 

 his return he carried home with him a bushel of seeds and 

 sowed them on his plantation. Soon after he went into the 

 Confederate service and was killed, leaving two little girls. 

 These girls were sent to school at Tuscaloosa, but having 



