SOEGHUM. 493 



Old World sent this boon to her offspring as a token of 

 good will ; and, in introducing it into notice, the agent, 

 Dr. J. Browne, has done more real, solid good, than all 

 the great conquerors of the nations. If the Agricultural 

 Bureau of the United States had never done aught else, 

 this one thing would more than have compensated for all 

 the expense it has been to the Government. It has 

 added the one thing needful to the farmer, it has made him 

 independent and enabled him to raise his own supply of 

 syrup, if not of sugar. 



But see how modest, *' Qood for fodder, green or dry, 

 and for making sugar." And thus this humble package 

 went to the country, seeking some one to make it famous. 

 Many, very many, threw it aside altogether. Some planted 

 it, and gave it untried to their stock. The stock soon told 

 its value as a forage, and some few squeezed a tumblerful of 

 its juice and tested it with the saccharometer. They found 

 about 16 or 17 per cent, of sugar. Some tasted it, and it 

 tasted sweet. Two made a gill or two of syrup, and, not 

 knowing how, did not report much success, but promised to 

 try it next year. All concurred in one thing, it was a great 

 accession to the forage crop of America. And yet this 

 plant was destined at a very early day to supply the poor 

 of the South with the great and almost the only luxury of a 

 long, tedious and bloody war. 



But the reports, meagre as they were, satisfied the De- 

 partment: it was all that it had been represented. So the 

 successful experiments were published and more seed was 

 procured and broadly distributed over .the land. The 

 second year, a furor began. It jumped at once into popular 

 favor and established itself, not only as a magnificent 

 forage crop, but also as ,a syrup cane. Within a year or two 

 sugar has been made from it of good quality, and during a 

 recent visit to the Agricultural Department at Washington, 

 I saw specimens of sugar manufactured from a new variety 

 as excellent in flavor and color as the best New Orleans 



