Worcester daily spy. [volume] (Worcester [Mass.]) 1850-1888, 1857-09-12

The cultivation of the Chinese sugar cane
is yet an experiment, and a most interesting
experiment to all classes of the people. If is
succeeds, we have a new and inexhaustible
source of molasses and sugar, which are now
so difficult to be obtained. 1t has this year,
when the season has not been very favorable
to it, been cultivated with various success in
many parts of the country. Some Of our
Northern farmers have thought that it might
be profitable for fodder, but for nothing else;
others that it would make molasses but not
granulate, and, therefore, be unfit for sugar;
while others have been most hopeful that it
would answer all the ends promised. Here
abouts it did not grow well in the early part
of the season, but has since done better, and
we find it now ten aud twelve feet high, and
standing the cold better than corn.
In other sections of the country it promises
better than here. The Chicago Journal says:
elm the Chinese sugar cane, we are now
confident, we have the source of an almost
unbounded supply. 1t will flourish every
where in the Union, and can be raised at the
West as easily and cheaply as corn. Where,
then, shall we fix the limit of its culture save
in the demand for sugar and molasses? The
prairies of Illinois, besides growing all the
breadstuffs they do now, might almost supply
the markets Of the world with these articles.
We shall be content, however, for the next
two or three years, with enough of each
to meet with the home demand. The bust
ness can be indefinitely extended hereafter"
In Michigan and Ohio, experimenters are
quite as sauguine as the Chicago men; and,
at the South, all accounts are in its favor.
If it proves favorable at all, it no doubt
will also upon the new lands Of the South
west, and we see that g. w. Kendall, for
merly editor of the New Orleans Picayatle,
who is now farming in Texas, hopes great
things from it. He writes:
81 have an immense crop of Chinese sugar
cane, considering the amount Of land plant.
ed. hardly dare say how much of the seed
think | can raise to the acre, but the amount
of fodder is prodigous. As look at it, and
am devising some plans to save it, cannot
help thinking of the poor fellow, who won
the elephant in rattle; he found he had got
too much Of coed thing, and did not know
what to do with it.
That the Sorgho Sucre stands drought
better than any thing else, is past all ques-
ton; proved it last year, and this year have
double confirmation. Rows of it are now
standing in my corn field, even here, with
well MANFRED, ripe heads, where the other
grain has come to nothing. All that it wants
is moisture enough in the ground to bring it
up, and then single shower to give it a
start, and it will go on and mature, when
every thing ese fails.
Many of my friends, in this section, are
sanguine, that this new grain or plant, will
drive all others ont of the ground, or, that it
WILL at least, effect perfect revolution, in the
way of farming in Western Texas. They
are saving the seed to plant, and for bread;
they are making syrup and sugar of the juice
of the stalk; they are feeding it out as green
fodder, and saving it up for dry. No part of
it is vested cattle, horses, sheep, and hogs,
eat it clean, from the ground upwards, when
the stalk is ripe, and gain strength and grow
fat upon it. An immense quantity of it will
be planted next year.