THE JUICE OF THE SUGAR CANE. 233 
The most productive having been constantly renewed, but are those 
which now are threatened with those alterations from which certain 
estates have already suffered so much loss. Of the twenty varieties of 
cane which have been introduced at different periods, and which have 
had more or less prominent cultivation in this colony, we will speak of 
six, because they are those generally met with, and also because they 
have been exclusively the object of our researches. 
1st. The white, or Otaheite cane. . 
2nd. The bamboo, or Batavian cane. 
3rd. The Guingan, or violet-striped cane. 
4th. The Belloguet, or purple Java cane. 
5th. The Penang cane. 
6th. The Diard cane, with which the white Bellognet is generally 
confounded. 
Before the cultivation of the cane had taken that extension which of 
late years it has acquired, and had become the principal, if not the sole 
source of the productions of this colony, it increased with a marvellous 
rapidity, and w ithout the aid of manure ; it formed on the surface of a 
rich and virgin soil into which its roots penetrated deeply, a layer of 
long thick matted stalks, whose thickness reached to five or six feet 
above the soil. But the imperfection of the means employed in sugar 
manufacture did not allow the planter to gain from this luxuriant vege- 
tation all the profit that it appeared to offer. The method employed for 
extracting the sugar is principally to be blamed, for it was simply that 
copied from the Arabs, and was hardly modified until the end of the 
last century, and, in fact, did not undergo any real amelioration until the 
latent heat of steam, and the vacuum apparatus permitted the planter 
to obtain nearly the same qualities of sugar, whatever might be the soil 
or climate in which the cane had grown. To speak only on what takes 
place in this colony, do we not know, for instance, that the planters 
situated near the sea-coast have had for a length of time, thanks to the 
nature of the soil and to the climatal conditions of the locality, the 
opportunity of manufacturing easily a very fine looking sugar, whilst 
those whose plantations were situated in the high and moist parts of the 
island, notwithstanding their most intelligent efforts and repeated trials 
never succeeded either in extracting the same quantity, and, above all, 
the same quality of sugar. We shall see in the course of this memoir 
the causes which influenced in so peculiar a manner such marked differ- 
ences of production, and which as yet have remained without any suffi- 
cient explanation. The advantages which the colony derived from a 
manufacture better understood and directed have been nevertheless 
diminished by the drawbacks inseparable from the too great prominence 
given to the cultivation of the same crop on the same soil. 
I do not wish to agitate this question here, the importance of which 
is too great to be treated in a casual manner. I only wish to draw notice 
to a fact which must be closely connected with a certain modifir 
b b 2 
