10 
CLXXXIV.—PRODUCTION OF SEED AND SEMINAL 
VARIATION IN THE SUGAR-CANE. 
r. Darwin sums up the results of many well-known observations 
tication, Vol. I lants which f cau ow t 
* luxuriously, duce wes stems, runners, suckers, tubers, 
“ buibs, &c. in excess, hei do not flower, or if they flower do 
* not yield seed.” As a mple he gives (p. 169) the sugar-cane. 
This, “ еол grows ob eme produces a large supply of succulent 
* stems, never, according to various observers, bears seed in the West 
4 Indios, Malaga, India, Cochin China, or the Malay Archipelago.” 
o one has ever found the sugar-cane gro wing wild, and no one, says 
Alphonse De Candolle, in his well-known “ Origine des Plantes Cul- 
tivées” (p. 125), has ever described or figured the seed. The late Mr. 
Bentham always spoke to me of the seed of the sugar-cane as a thing 
entirely unknown in herbaria. Hackel, the most recent authority on 
grasses, states in his recently published Monograph of the Andropogonee 
тшт respect ч е seed of the sugar-cane, “cariopsin nemo adhuc 
етм videtur.” 
DN nee of practical men has been to the same effec 
Leonard W аў x Proetieat Sugi Phanter, ” 1848, pp. тва мын 
the question at great length. А few passages may be quo 
“ ften hear of ‘ cane seed,’ and latterly a very aun inqui 
was set on foot with a view to decide the question whether the sugar- 
cane is really raised from seed in any part of the world or not, which 
terminated, I believe, in establishing the fact of there being no country 
known wherein the cane is, at — ey raised from seed ; whatever may 
have aoe the case ie earlier age 
* * * 
= The ашы recurring = that canes аге raised from seed in 
Egypt and the Јес Indies has kept alive a strong belief that the 
ch i e 
numerous have been the endeavours, both private and public, which 
have been made to become possessed of it. The Royal Agricultural 
Society of Jamaica took up the subject, and exhibited much industry 
in collecting information ; and, for aught I know to the contrary, may 
still be инш — o inqu uiry." 
* 3 * * 
He finally arrives at the conclusion, “по variety of sugar-cane is 
* known to perfect its seed (or, indeed, to produce Ae like seed), 
“ either in India, China, the Straits of "Malacca, Egypt, or even in the 
* South Sea slands i as in those countries the cane is entirely 
* propagated by cuttings” Lock, Wigner, and Harland (Sugar 
Growing and Refining, ad authorities nearly 40 years later, may be 
quoted to the same effect (p. 61 
** Tt has more than oo been cael that the sugar-cane is in some 
localities reproduced from seed, but the statement “has originated in a 
misconception, there being no kind: of sugar-cane known to regularly 
perfect its seed. а is, therefore, effected slav by 
means of cuttings from the stem 
e number of varieties of sagas-cané in existence is ты їп 
the Jamaica Botanic Gardens in 1884 there were 60 u 
cultivation. The interesting question arises as to wh they have 
* 
