The fertility and productiveness of the sugar-cane is immense, second only to the sago-palms. "The first sugar-canes planted with care on a virgin soil, yield a harvest during twenty to twenty-five years, after which they must be replanted every three years." In the island of Cuba, instances are known of a sugar-plantation existing for forty-five years. To procure new plants, the tedious process of sowing seeds is not necessary. The practice is followed of taking cuttings, and the stools, or scions, which spring from the joints (_nodi_) of the old plant, are fit to be separated in fourteen days; these, in the course of a year, are so well grown that they may be cut down, and submitted to the sugar-mill. An English acre under culture for sugar, in Java, yields 1285 pounds avoirdupois of refined sugar, and the produce at Cuba is nearly the same. Let not the thought arise, on the perusal of these statements, that the gifts of Providence are distributed with partiality, as nothing could be more unfounded. Independent of the destruction of the plantations which tropical hurricanes so often occasion, an insect of the locust kind, more particularly in the East Indies, produces such fearful devastation as to realize the scene described by the prophet Joel--"A fire devoureth before them, and behind them a flame burneth: the land is as the garden of Eden before them, and behind them a desolate wilderness; yea, and nothing shall escape them[T]." From such visitations, northern latitudes are generally exempt, and the constant struggle which man has had to maintain with the elements and a churlish soil, has so whetted his faculties as to render the return for his labour not only more certain, but even more abundant[U]. As if to shew that "the earth full of the riches of the Lord," in parts of the world where the low temperature is an obstacle to the profitable cultivation of the sugar-cane, a substitute is found for it in the _acer saccharinum_, or sugar-maple, which presents the great peculiarity of the ascending sap being charged with sugar to such a degree as to be then fit for the manufacture of this valuable substance. There results from this circumstance a most important advantage to the inhabitants of the northern regions, where this tree grows, that the juice is extracted early in spring, a time when the rigour of the season condemns the labourer to inactivity. Besides, the sugar-maple grows spontaneously, and requires no care, till it is fit for tapping; and when deprived of its juice, and incapable of yielding more sugar, its wood is applicable to a far greater number and variety of uses than the bruised cane, since as fuel the maple is most valuable; and its ashes yield, from their richness in the alkaline principle, four-fifths of the potash exported to Europe from Boston and New York. The timber of the sugar-maple is also highly prized, both for common and ornamental purposes--as the beautiful bird's-eye maple is obtained from this tree.