À CYTOLOGICAL INVESTIGATION OF SOME SPECIES AND 
SPECIES HYBRIDS WITHIN THE GENUS SACCHARUM 2) 
by DR. G. BREMER 
Botanist of the Experiment-station at Pasoerocan 
INTRODUCTION 
Before 1885 it was generally supposed that no Saccharum officina- 
rum could produce fertile seeds. The circumstances, that sugar cane 
flowers but rarely, that many varieties of it are partially or wholly ste- 
rile, that the seeds are very small and require careful treatment to in- 
duce them to sprout, have doubtless caused this misconception. A. DE 
CANDOLLE ?) even still wrote in the second edition of his. „L’origine des 
planiescultivees’’, which was published in 1883, „personneä ma connais- 
sance n'a décrit ou figuré la graine”. HACKEL ?) also, writes 1889 of Sac- 
charum officinarum , Cariopsin nemo adhuc videsse videtur”. Still it is 
said, that J. W. Parris 4) has grown sugar cane from seed on the isle 
of Barbados as early as between 1858 and 1861, while it is aiso reported 
that the regent (native chief) of Kendal, Java, Noto Hamr Prop TOP 
has obtained sugarcane from seed in 1862. 
These experiments have been of no practical use for the cultivation 
of the sugarcane; the possibility to obtain cane from seed had not been 
noticed or at least had soon been forgotten. 
In1885SOLTWEDEL,the first Director of the Experimentstation, Mid- 
1) Translated from the Dutch in „Mededeelingen van het Proefstation voor de 
Java-Suikerindustrie”, Archief van de Suikerindustrie in Nederlandsch-Indié 
1922 p. 1—111. 
?) A. DE CANDOLLE, L’origine des plantes cultivées, deuxième édition. 1883, 
*) E. Hacker, Andropogoneae in A. de Candolle Monogrophiae Phanerogama- 
rum VI. 
4) J. D. Kogus, Historisch overzicht over het zaaien van suikerriet. Archief 
_ voor de Java-Suikerindustrie Ip. 15. 
5) D. F. van ALPHEN, Natuurk. Tijdschr. v. Nederl. Indié, Deel 25 1862 p. 359. 
Genetica V # 
