Current Investigations in Economic Botany. $7 
cultural procedure in the West Indies. The parent canes flower 
or “ arrow ” in the dry season (about November) of one year. The 
small seeds are sown in boxes covered with glass, and the young 
seedlings after being pricked out into pots are ready for trans¬ 
plantation into the open ground in the following April or May. 
During the first year of their life growth is comparatively small 
and at the end of this period all that is possible is to select the more 
vigorous seedlings for further propagation in the ordinary way by 
cuttings. At the end of the second year a small number of plants 
will be available grown from each of the original seedlings and those 
showing desirable cultural characteristics are selected, some of their 
canes crushed and their juice analysed. The best are again propa¬ 
gated by cuttings and the plants selected by cultural and chemical 
characters. The process is repeated and it usually requires about 
six years before enough plants are available to allow of plots of say 
100 plants each, all derived from one original seedling, being grown 
on several different estates, or of one plot of perhaps ten acres being 
grown as an industrial experiment on a single estate. When it is 
remembered that in addition to the percentage of sucrose and glucose 
in the juice the value of a sugar cane depends on its ratooning 
properties (i.e. of developing successive annual crops from the same 
rootstock after the previous growth of stems have been cut) on its resis¬ 
tance to disease, on its milling characters, on the value of the crushed 
cane as fuel and numerous other characters, and that accurate 
knowledge on these points demands trial of each variety on an estate 
scale with plots of several acres in extent and for several years, 
it must be conceded that the practical difficulties confronting those 
engaged in the work are sufficiently serious to prevent rapid progress. 
In practice it is necessary to carry on the early selections in 
small plot experiments, rigorously rejecting each year all but the 
very best canes and finally testing the few survivors on a larger 
scale before recommending them to planters for trial on a sufficiently 
large scale to allow of an authoritative opinion being expressed. The 
following example from British Guiana will serve to illustrate the 
scale on which seedlings have been raised and the comparatively 
small number which have passed through the selection ordeal. 
During the years 1896 to 1901 some 314,000 seedlings were raised, 
of which 75,000 were transplanted into baskets and some 19,000 
cultivated in the fields, but the net result was that only 21 were 
finally recommended to planters for estate trial and of perhaps not 
more than three have stood the test of several seasons’ trial and 
