JAMAICA. 



BULLETIN 



OF THE 



BOTANICAL DEPARTMENT. 



NfeW Series.] AUGUST, 1898. " ' 



Part 8. 



AGRICULTURE OF THE SUGAR CANE,— II. 



Extracts from "Sugar Cane, VoL 1." by Dr. "Willta.m Stubbs, 

 Director of the Louisiana Sugar Experiment Station. 



Edited by Francis Watts, Grovernment Chemist, Jamaica. 



Manorial Eequirements of Sugar Cane. 



Commercial fertilisers are valued chiefly for one or more of the fol- 

 lowing ingredients : Nitrogen (ammonia), phosphoric acid, and potash. 

 They should be used whenever crops are grown which do not attain 

 their maximum production on account of a deficiency in the soil of one 

 or more of the above ingredients. But the deficiency of plant food is 

 not always the cause of small returns. "Water, as already remarked, so 

 essential to crops and needed sometimes in great abundance, is fre- 

 quently, on our soils, and in this climate, productive of great harm. 

 Hence drainage for its speedy removal is absolutely essential. A 

 drought, on the other hand, may call for irrigation. Want of porosity 

 so common to our black lands, seriously impedes root development. 



Some soils bake or cake after very hard rain, and thus by excluding 

 the air and checking evaporation, work disaster to the plant. A great 

 defect with many of our sugar soils is the impermeability of surface 

 water, forming, unless high ridges with deeply ploughed middles pre- 

 vent, stagnant water at or near the surface, which brings disaster and 

 sometimes death to a rapidly developing plant. 



Humus, so essential to every soil in this climate, is frequently badly 

 needed. 



Climatic conditions of a purely local character may temporarily pre- 

 vail, such as alternations of temperature, hot, parching winds, as in 

 south-western Kansas, often destroying a crop in a few days. 



It may therefore be asserted that whenever a soil from a physical, 

 chemical or climatic defect, forbids the growth of large crops, even 

 when well supplied with fertilizing ingredients then the application of 

 commercial fertilizers is a waste. The amelioration of its environ- 



