It is very doubtful whether sugar-cane occurs anywhere in the wild state, at present. Authorities are quite unanimous in expressing it as their opinion that its original home was India. It is a plant that has been under cultivation for many centuries. Alexander the Great, in his invasions of India, found that the inhabitants of that country cultivated and used it extensively as a food article. Theophrastus mentions a “sweet salt” (sugar) which he obtained by evaporating the juice of an Indian reedlike plant, which was perhaps sugar-cane, though there is no conclusive evidence that the earlier Greeks and Romans were familiar with sugar; they employed honey quite universally. The “sweet cane” of Scripture is probably Andropogon calamus aromaticus, or sweet calamus, which was a native of India. It is presumed by some that the cane grown in China was originally native there. The cultivation of sugar-cane seems to have spread very rapidly. It early found its way to Persia and Arabia, and then from Arabia as a center has spread to the Mediterranean districts, Sicily, Cyprus, Spain and Italy. It found its way to Santo Domingo as early as 1494 and to Brazil early in the sixteenth century. At the present time cane is grown in nearly all tropical and sub-tropical countries, the Southern United States producing more than any other country. There are many varieties recognized by cultivators, differing in color, texture and other minor characteristics. Since cane does not ripen fruit, it is propagated by transplanting the rhizomes and top portions of stem, and after a field is once planted new crops are permitted to spring up from the old rhizomes, and this accounts for the awful tangle of the famous Southern canebrakes, which figured so extensively in the slave days, when these fields served as hiding places for the fugitive slaves. The ripe cane is cut close to the ground, the leaves stripped off and the tassel cut off. It is then carted to the cane mill and passed between large rollers, which express the juice, which is then clarified by means of lime, animal charcoal and blood. Heat further aids the purifying process by coagulating the albuminous matter, which, mixed with other impurities, rises to the surface as a scum and is removed by means of a special ladle. The lime combines with the free acid present and settles to the bottom. The juice is boiled until it acquires a proper tenacity, when it is passed into a cooler and allowed to crystallize. This sugar is then placed in large perforated casks and allowed to drain for two or three weeks, when it is packed into hogsheads and exported under the name of raw sugar or muscovado sugar. The drainings form molasses. Raw sugar is taken to the sugar refinery and purified by heating with water and bullocks’ blood, filtered through canvas bags and finally allowed to percolate very slowly through large cylinders containing freshly prepared, coarse-grained animal charcoal.