The Rural Magazine, and Literary Evening Fire-Side, Vol. 1 No. 01 (1820)Various
History
The Rural Magazine, and Literary Evening Fire-Side, Vol. 1 No. 01 (1820)
Various
Agriculture; Agriculture -- Periodicals
Three species of sugar cane can be distinguished even at a distance,
by the colour of their leaves; the ancient Creole sugar cane,
the Otaheite cane, and the Batavia cane. The first has a leaf
of a deeper green, the stem less thick, and the knots nearer
together.--This sugar cane was the first introduced from India into
Sicily, the Canary Islands and the West Indies. The second is of a
lighter green; and its stem is higher, thicker, and more succulent.
The whole plant displays a more luxuriant vegetation. We owe this
plant to the voyages of Bougainville, Cook, and Bligh. Bougainville
carried it to the Isle of France, whence it passed to Cayenne,
Martinique, and since 1792, to the rest of the West India Islands.
The sugar cane of Otaheite, the _To_ of those islanders, is one of
the most important acquisitions, for which colonial agriculture is
indebted to the travels of naturalists. It yields not only one third
more of juice than the Creolian cane on the same space of land; but
from the thickness of its stem, and the tenacity of its ligneous
fibres, it furnishes much more fuel. The last advantage is important
to the West Indies, where the destruction of the forests has for a
long time obliged the planters to use the canes deprived of their
juice, to keep up the fire under their boilers.
But from the knowledge of this new plant, the progress of
agriculture on the continent of Spanish America, and the
introduction of the East India and Java sugars, the revolutions of
St. Domingo, and the destruction of the great sugar plantations of
that island, would have had a more sensible effect on the prices
of colonial produce in Europe. The Otaheite sugar cane was carried
from the Isle of Trinidad to Caraccas. From Caraccas it passed
to Cicuta and San Gil in the kingdom of New Grenada. In our days
its cultivation during twenty-five years almost entirely removed
the apprehension, which was at first entirely entertained, that,
transplanted to America, the plant would by degrees degenerate,
and become as slender as the Creole cane. If it be a variety, it
is a very constant one. The third species, the violet sugar cane,
called _Cana de Batavia_, or _de Guinea_, is entirely indigenous
in the island of Java, where it is cultivated in preference in the
districts of Jupara and Pasuruan. Its foliage is purple, and very
broad; and it is preferred in the province of Caraccas for rum. The
_tablones_, or grounds planted with sugar canes, are divided by
hedges of a collossal gramen; the latta, or gynesium with distich
leaves.
_American Fig Tree_.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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