98 A CYTOLOGICAL INVESTIGATION OF SOME SPECIES 
den- Java” at Semarang, began to experiment with the sowing of sugar- 
cane. In that same year he succeeded in his efforts to induce the seeds 
of ,glagah”, Saccharum spontaneum, to sprout 1). Next year he began to 
investigate the flowering of thé sugarcane and thecondition of the pollen. 
He found that the inflorescences of several varieties produced normal 
flowers, and observed frequently sprouted pollen on the stigmata of the 
varieties Mauritius-cane and Loethers’-cane. He also observed, in 
the case of , glongong’’, perfectly normal flowers, pollination, fertilisa- 
tion and the formation of seed” ?), and concluded: „the first thing to do 
now, is to try the possibility of crossing „Glongong’’, Mauritius-cane 
and Loethers”’. 
In 1887 SOLTWEDEL tried to cross ,glagah” with Loethers 3). He 
writes: We have chosen this year for such a cross „glagah’’ and Loe- 
thers; Glonggong could not be included because this kind only begins 
to flower at the time when the flowering of Loethers is over. Crossing 
sugarcane is however extremely difficult on account of the extreme 
smallness of the flowers. By means of a very small pair of scissors we 
tried to cut away the, as yet unopened, anthers, in a number of flowers 
of glagah and Loethers. Subsequently we applied Loethers-pollen to 
the castrated flowers of glagah and reciprocally. The result was the ob- 
tention of seed from the glagah flowers, while all Loethers-flowers fai- 
led to set seed”. 
SOLTWEDEL however was by no means sure that the glagah-seed 
owed its origin to the foreign pollen. He obtained no seed from the cross 
glagah X Loethers, but nevertheless the idea to cross sugar-cane was 
his. 
In the same year SOLTWEDEL obtained seed of nine kinds of sugar- 
*) Tijdschrift voor Land- en Tuinbouw en Boschcultuur. 2e jaarg. 1886—87 p. 
‘104. 
2) ibidem, :p. 210. 
3) ibidem 3e jaarg., p. 129. 
4) The Java-planter never speaks of sugarcane varieties. He speaks of different 
„soorten’’ of sugarcane, meaning a species, the english differentiation between 
kind and species has no equivalent in Dutch, both conceptions are covered by 
the word ,,soort”. Wherever we speak in this translation of ,,kinds’’, we mean in- 
dividuals, belonging to the species Saccharum officinarum, which have been mul- 
tiplied by cutting. A kind consequently embraces all clones obtained from a seed- 
ling-variety of Saccharum officinarum. Wherever species is used, this term is 
used in the botanical sense. 
