When the cane has been cut, the ground is loosened once more, the dry leaves are put in the spaces between the furrows and covered with earth, the young cane shoots come up, and in another year the ratoons are ready for harvesting. Two or three ratoon crops are grown on the same land, but as soon as the yield gets too small the ground is left fallow and planting is done elsewhere. Until recently Bourbon cane was the only variety raised in British Guiana. Of late, however, many kinds of seedling cane have been introduced, and today it is estimated that more than one-half of the crop comes from seedling stock. Fertilizing is done with phosphates, guano, potash, sulphate of ammonia and stable manure. The cane is brought from the fields to the mills by canal in flat-bottomed boats. The equipment in the factories is good, as a whole; crushing is efficiently done and the juices are boiled to grain in vacuum pans. In addition to 96-degree centrifugals and second sugars, the celebrated “Demerara crystals” are produced. In making the latter the juice is kept acid throughout the process, from one to five per cent being lost through inversion. Chloride of tin is added in the vacuum pan to heighten the yellow color. The greater part of the molasses goes into the manufacture of rum, and a certain quantity, mixed with ground bagasse, finds a market in England as cattle food. While on virgin soil the yield of cane runs as high as sixty to seventy tons to the acre, the average is about twenty tons per acre, and the extraction of sugar equals 8½ per cent of the weight of the cane. In late years the number of sugar mills has grown less, owing to the merging of many small plants into a few large ones. In 1908 the area planted in cane was 73,471 acres, and there were forty-two plantations, six of them less than 1000 acres, twenty-five over 1000 acres, six over 2000 acres, four over 3000 acres, and one over 7000 acres in size. Over half of the sugar exported goes to Canada, the remainder being taken by Great Britain and the United States.