The sugar-cane is also subject to the _blast_--a disease which no foresight can obviate, and for which human wisdom has hitherto in vain attempted to find a remedy. When this happens, the fine broad green blades become sickly, dry, and withered; soon after they appear stained in spots, and if these are carefully examined, they will be found to contain countless eggs of an insect like a bug, which are soon quickened, and cover the plants with vermin; the juice of the canes thus affected becomes sour, and no future shoot issues from the joints. The ravages of the ants concur with those of the bugs in ruining the prospects of many a sugar-field, and often a long continued drought or the fury of the tornado will destroy the hopes of the planter. The land crabs are also very injurious to the sugar-fields, some of the species being particularly fond of the cane, the juice of which they suck and chiefly subsist on. They are of course narrowly watched, and no opportunity of catching them is lost sight of; but such is their activity in running, that they are almost always enabled to escape. They seldom go far from their burrows in day-time; and their watchfulness is such that they regain them in a moment, and disappear as soon as a man or dog comes near enough to be seen. Harvest-time in the sugar-plantations is no less a season of gladness than in the corn-fields of England. So palatable, wholesome, and nourishing is the fresh juice of the cane, that every animal drinking freely of it derives health and vigour from its use. The meagre and sickly among the negroes exhibit a surprising alteration in a few weeks after the mill is set in action. The labouring oxen, horses, and mules, though almost constantly at work during this season, yet being indulged with plenty of the green tops and some of the scummings from the boiling-house, improve more than at any other period of the year. Even the pigs and poultry fatten on the refuse, and enjoy their share of the banquet. The wholesome effects of the juice of the sugar-cane has not escaped the attention of English physicians, and many a weak-breasted patient, instead of coughing and freezing at home over what is ironically termed a comfortable fireside, now spends his winter in the West Indian Islands, chewing the sweet cane and enjoying in January a genial warmth of seventy-two degrees in the shade. The mountain regions of Enarea and Caffa, which the reader, on consulting a map of Africa, will find situated to the south of Abyssinia, are most probably the countries where the coffee-tree was first planted by Nature, as it has here not only been cultivated from time immemorial, but is everywhere found growing wild in the forests. [Illustration: GENERAL FRASER’S COFFEE ESTATE AT RANGBODDE, CEYLON.]