PLANTING. 



135 



are used for planting are generally ratoons, if 

 any exist upon the plantation, but if there are 

 none of these, the inferior plant canes supply 

 their places. It is accounted more economical 

 to make use of the ratoons for this purpose, and 

 many persons say that they are less liable to rot 

 than the plant canes. In the British sugar 

 islands the cuttings for planting " are commonly 

 the tops of the canes which have been ground 

 for sugar." * But in Brazil the tops of the 

 canes are all thrown to the cattle, for there is 

 usually a want of grass during the season that 

 the mills are at work, t In the British colonies, 



* The passages in this chapter which are marked as being 

 quotations, are taken from Edwards' History of the West- 

 Indies. I mention this, once for all, to save room and 

 trouble. 



f The author of the Nouveau Voyage, $c. torn. iii. p. 218., 

 mentions having covered the claying house belonging to a 

 mill, the property of his Order, with the tops of the sugar- 

 cane. I never saw this practised in Brazil, and indeed Labat 

 says, that they were not commonly put to this purpose in 

 the parts of which he writes. He says, that a species of 

 reed was usually employed. In Brazil there is a kind of 

 grass which answers the purpose, and is durable ; and this 

 quality, Labat says, that the cane-tops possess ; however in 

 Brazil the leaves of the coco and of other palms are gene- 

 rally used. 



Although it was the general custom to employ the cane- 

 tops for planting, Labat objects to them from his own au- 

 thority, upon the score of these not possessing sufficient 

 strength to yield good canes. The same opinion is general 

 in Pernambuco. 



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