422 ON THE JUICE OP THE SUGAR-CANE. 
with regard to the relative quantities of liquid and crystallizable sugar 
contained in the body or the head of the canes. It may be mentioned, 
however, in a general manner that the cane contains a greater portion 
of uncrystallizable sugar ; n proportion as it is younger ; but it is to its 
active vegetation, and to the want of the action of sunlight on its stem 
so closed up by the fleshy sheaths of the leaves, that, in my opinion, is 
to be attributed the very large proportion of intervened sugar which it 
contains. 
4. In this respect vegetation in an active state, or in a condition of 
diminishing activity has in fact an influence as great and as appreciable 
as that of light itself. Kipe canes which do not contain the least trace 
of levulose in the internodal portion of their length, become rapidly 
charged with a large quantity of this substance when brought again into 
full vegetation ; and so long as their green and widely spread leaves are 
in an active state of renewal, and the buds detach themselves, and the 
plants preserve that appearance which is peculiar to them in their grow- 
ing state, it can then be seen that their juice is highly charged with un- 
crystallizable sugar, principally in the newly-formed tissues and con- 
sequently less exposed to the light. In damp localities where the canes 
never ripen, and are constantly in full sap, uncrystallizable sugar exists 
in every portion of the plant, and sometimes in really considerabie 
quantities. In. the December of last year, after those continued rains 
which so deeply troubled the vegetation of the cane, the juice extracted 
from the body of a Bellouguet cane cut in one of the watered parts of 
the Island, contained 8*3 per cent, of sugar of which 1*7 was inter verted 
and 6-6 were alone capable of crystallizing. During the entire period 
of the last crop, I experimented in different localities with a view to this 
specific subject, and the researches I then made confirmed the opinion I 
had already formed from the first experiments on my own estate. I 
have always found in the specimens of cane and juice which I have ex- 
amined, and which came from localities the natural humidity of which 
had this year been increased by the abundant and unseasonable rains, a 
much greater quantity of uncrystallizable sugar than that contained in 
the canes which had been cut in the same localities in previous years. I 
thus found an average of 14 grammes of liquid sugar in 1,000 grammes 
of juice on an estate which had been abundantly watered during the 
whole of the crop, and only 4 grammes on another estate placed in more 
favourable circumstances. 
When it is sought to determine the proportions of these two kinds of 
sugar in different phases of vegetation, it is found that the greatest 
quantity of levulose always exists in the canes which have pushed up 
the most rapidly ; and, in this respect, those canes which are technically 
called " foolish," which sometimes grow in two months to a height of 
five feet with a transverse diameter of three to four inches at the base, 
are those which are to be placed in the first rank. 
