December, 1909.] 



513 



Edible Products- 



As regards the other cane-growing 

 countries, there are abler pens than 

 mine to express the value of their results 

 with cane seedlings ; I will limit myself, 

 therefore, to those obtained in Java. 



When Soltwedel made his experiments 

 he prepared the small cane fruits from 

 the surrounding glumfe, a practice that 

 we did not follow in later years because 

 it was too troublesome, but he learned 

 thereby that in many cane varieties there 

 were only very few flowers that gave 

 mature seeds. In his experiments, the 

 arrows of most varieties produced under 

 1 per cent., and only one cane (Branche 

 blanch^, from Mauritius) gave 31 per 

 cent, seeds. These seeds (properly 

 fruits) were very small ; their weight 

 varied from O'lO to 0'22 mgrms. 



One of Soltwedel's assistants, Dr. 

 Benecke, published in 1889 Soltwedel's 

 results and his own, a report that was 

 chiefly remarkable for a series of draw- 

 ings representing the germination of 

 cane seeds and young cane plants, aged 

 from some days to over a month, that 

 made it easy to recognise them and to 

 distinguish them from other young 

 grasses. 



In 1888 I myself tried to raise cane 

 seedlings, but did not succeed until 1890, 

 when some varieties introduced from 

 the Fiji Islands, that arrowed abundant- 

 ly, gave me a lot of seedlings, of which, 

 however, only fifty survived. A year 

 later Moquette, one of our cleverest 

 managers, discovered the reason why so 

 many seedlings died when young. We 

 used to sow out the cane seeds in the 

 shadow in the sandy soil. Moquette 

 made use of a heavy fertile soil, placed 

 the boxes filled therewith in the sun and 

 took care that the soil did not dry up. 



After this discovery we got better 

 results. As early as 1892 Moquette had 

 already a field with 5,000 seedlings ; 

 twelve months afterward Bouricius 

 and Nash found in and near fields plant- 

 ed with Fiji canes several hundred 

 young plants, and in 1894 Bouricius 

 succeeded in crossing the Fiji cane that 

 produced large quantities of pollen, with 

 our Cheribon or Black Java cane, the 

 flowers of which are all female, or nearly 

 so, since the pollen only rarely reaches 

 its full development. 



Dr. Walker published in this year 

 interesting researches on cane flowers. 

 He found that flowers of different 

 varieties vary very much ; some have 

 normal flowers, with well-developed 

 pistils and stamens and good pollen ; in 

 others most of the pollen has dried up 

 and self-fertilisation is, of course, very 

 65 



doubtful. Again, in other varieties all 

 the pollen is quite dry or else has not 

 developed at all. 



Some canes that arrow freely have 

 flowers that contain inside the glumae, 

 only an irregular tissue bearing many 

 membranes and filaments resembling 

 pestils. Stamens and ovaries are absent. 

 One variety has its undeveloped flowers 

 hidden in the sheath of the highest leaf, 

 so that the inflorescences much resemble 

 those of the cauliflower. Finally, we 

 have several varieties in Java of which, 

 till now, flowers have not been seen. 



Walker's results elucidated many 

 points that we could not understand 

 before, amongst others the fact that the 

 discovery of cane seedlings in Java did 

 not take place at an earlier date, be- 

 cause the prominent varieties were 

 nearly sterile when left to self-fertili- 

 sation. 



The results just mentioned induced 

 several managers to start seedling ex- 

 periments, but, though many of them 

 succeeded in raising large quantities of 

 cane seedlings, nearly all these perished 

 the second year from sereh or other 

 diseases, Only two varieties of all those 

 bred during this period and introduced 

 inco the cane fields of the factories 

 succeeded in dislodging the Cheribon 

 cane by their superior qualities. The 

 increasing sugar production in Java is 

 partially due to the introduction of 

 these seedling canes, viz., No. 247, bred 

 by Mr. Bouricius, a crossing from the 

 Cheribon and Fiji (Canne morte) canes, 

 and No. 100, got casually by Dr. Walker 

 from a black Borneo cane and an un- 

 known father. 



The very superior qualities of our 

 black Java (Cheribon) cane, only checked 

 by its liability to disease, made me cross 

 it, when I returned in 1897 to the East 

 Java Experiment Station with the 

 Chunnee variety, a very thin cane, 

 though with a juice rich in sugar, that I 

 had imported from Bengal some years 

 before, and that was entirely immune 

 from sereh and the root disease, which, 

 in many parts of Java, rendered impos- 

 sible the cultivation of Cheribon canes 

 and of several other varieties. 



The expectation that the seedlings 

 would inherit the immunity of the male 

 parent was quite fulfilled. Till then we 

 had seen a large majority of the seed- 

 lings perish in the second year from the 

 sereh disease, and nearly all the other 

 in the third and fourth years. Once 

 from a remarkably fine set of 1,700 seed- 

 lings, after four years, we had not one 

 left ; all died from sereh. 



