58 
SUGAR CANE. 
known at that time, would have availed themselves 
of its luscious juice; and if so, some of their authors, 
whose works have escaped the ravages of time, would 
probably have mentioned the circumstance. 
It would be foreign to our purpose to trace the 
first use of sugar amongst mankind, especially as a 
minute history of this substance, in the early and 
middle ages, has been given in the Manchester 
Transactions, by Dr. Falconer; we shall therefore 
merely add, that the sugar cane was first made known 
to the western parts of the world by the conquests 
of Alexander the Great, whose admiral Nearchus 
found it in the East Indies 325 years before Christ ; 
and that Dioscorides mentions a kind of honey 
growing in the earth, called saccharon, which has 
the appearance of salt, and is brittle between the 
teeth. From this we may suppose that the art of 
granulating the juice of the cane was known in his 
time. 
The question whether the sugar cane grew spon- 
taneously in the West Indies, or was conveyed 
thither for the purpose of cultivation, was for some 
time agitated by different authors ; till at length the 
arguments of Labat seem to have settled the point, 
and proved it to be a native both of the islands and 
of the continent of America. His testimony has 
been greatly strengthened by the discoveries of cap- 
tain Cook, who found the cane growing wild on 
many of the islands in the Pacific Ocean. 
Having thus described the appearance of the 
plant, and mentioned the different parts of the 
