PRESENT SYSTEM 01 PLANTING CANES. 



35 



proved, by showing the stool of a cane, grown in a 

 cane-hole, with its roots,, after radiating outwards, all 

 curving upwards at the extremities. This reasoning is 

 very simply answered by the fact, that the roots of the 

 cane, or of any other plant, must go in search of the 

 nutriment upon which the plant subsists, and if the cane 

 plant is placed at the bottom of a deep hole, on a hard 

 and barren subsoil, and all the substances which are to 

 support its existence are piled around upon a high bank, 

 its roots have no alternative but to grow upwards in search 

 of the food which they can only find there. Let any one 

 who is unconvinced of this, plant canes, as I have done, 

 in deeply ploughed and carefully tilled land, with a plain 

 surface, and they will find that no roots grow upwards, but 

 that one portion of the roots extend laterally to what such 

 persons would consider an incredible distance, and that 

 another portion strike downwards, as far as the nature of 

 the soil will afford them anv thins: to 2:0 in search of. I 

 have followed the roots of a bunch of canes in an alluvial 

 deposit, to a depth of more than four feet, and have traced 

 them to a distance of six feet from the centre of the bunch ; 

 and further, in support of this assertion, I quote from one of 

 the Jamaica prize essays, the following passage : — " In dig- 

 ging post holes for a cow pen, in a thrown up cane piece, 1 

 have found abundance of strong cane roots, running in 

 all directions, in a stiff, cold clay, two feet perpendicular 

 below the surface. In transplanting some young canes, 

 about six or eight weeks old, I pulled up some with roots 



