The sugar cane differs from the common reed no otherwise than in having more joints, and a smaller space between each. It is adorned with beautifully green and very large leaves, especially at the top. It is about four inches thick. Though the plant is seven or eight feet high, great part of it towards the top is thrown away, being devoid of juice, and very full of leaves. Sugar canes like a rich and moist soil, nor will they grow much on hills, though well watered. More earth must be heaped on the sugar cane after it has been lately planted in the summer, less in the winter, that it may not bud too much; for the more leaves it bears the less juice it will yield. Weeds, which suck up the moisture of the earth, must be carefully extirpated. Moderate frosts are useful to the full grown canes, because they thicken the sweet liquor; immoderate ones do harm, because they exhaust it all. Ants, which are destructive to the young canes, must be carefully kept away. Many other arts, proper to be used in the rearing and expression of canes, and the converting of them into sugar, I choose to omit for the sake of brevity. I have briefly described the principal ones, that Europeans may be made thoroughly acquainted with the origin of sugar, which they know so well how to consume, and cease to wonder that these reedy sweets, so laboriously prepared in America, should often be sold at such an extravagant price in Europe. BEES' HONEY. Throughout the whole of Paraguay you see none of those beehives the keeping of which is so troublesome in Europe, because the various species of bees deposit their excellent and copious honey either in hollow trees, in the caverns of the earth, or in the open plain; especially in those territories which enjoy a mild climate, and are near to flowery plains. Honey differs both in name and taste according to the different bees that produce it, and the different times and places in which it is produced. That which is concealed under ground the Abipones call _nahérek_. In some places it is rather acid, in others very sweet. A quantity sufficient to fill many jugs is often dug out of one cave. That which is taken at the beginning of spring from the tops of shrubs or high grass is called by the Spaniards _lechiguana_. The materials of which the cells of this honey consist are very like blotting-paper, and are often of such extent and circumference that you can hardly embrace them with both arms. The honeycombs which certain wasps build in Europe are constructed in much the same way. The excellence of the lechiguana honey you may ascribe to its being made of the first spring flowers, and if it remains untouched for some months, and escapes the eyes and hands of passers by, it hardens of itself, like sugar, which it excels in sweetness. Moreover it has no admixture of wax. Though various kinds of honey are found under the earth, and in the plain, yet the principal