Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume XV.djvu/460

 SUGAR turned to the right or left may be made to produce that tint to which the eye of the ob- server is the most sensitive. Sugar Cane. Commercial cane sugar is made from species of saccharum, especially S. officinarum, a genus of grasses of the tribe andropogonece, of which subdivision the cultivated sorghum and broom corn are familiar examples. Sugar cane is a perennial grass, with solid stems from 6 to 20 ft. high, the older plants throwing up numer- ous stems or suckers from the root ; the leaves, 3 ft. or more long and 3 in. broad, have thin sheaths, usually glaucous with a bloom or waxy exudation, which is also found upon the stem, especially in the dark-colored varieties ; the flowers are in a large, ample, and showy panicle, about 2 ft. long, the ultimate branches of which are notched or jointed, bearing at each joint two flowers, one of which is sessile and neutral, the other on a short pedicel and perfect ; both kinds of flowers are surrounded Sugar Cane (Saccharum officinale). by a tuft of long hairs, which gives the cluster a soft silvery appearance. The sap or juice of the plant contains from 15 to 20 per cent, of sugar. It has not been found in the wild state in any part of the world ; and while there is much doubt as to its native country, the most careful investigations point to Bengal as the origin of 8. officinarum, and it was there that the manufacture of sugar commenced. If, as botanists are disposed to admit, the sugar cane of China is a distinct species (S. Sinense), it would appear that the cultivation of related plants for the extraction of sugar was under- taken separately in two distinct and widely separated countries. "While the product was anciently referred to as "honey of canes," and by other names, sugar as we know it is not mentioned before the commencement of the present era. Dioscorides, about A. D. 100, men- tions taccharon. In the 9th century the culti- vation had extended to Persia, and in the 10th and llth centuries Avicenna and other eastern physicians used sugar in medicine. Its culti- vation was carried on in Spain in the 10th century, at which time sugar was an article of trade, especially by the Venetians, through whom the English received their supply. The cane was introduced into Madeira in 1420, and some time after into the Canaries. With the discovery of America, its distribution was very rapid, Santo Domingo, Brazil, Mexico, Guade- loupe, and other countries undertaking its cul- ture in quick succession. Meanwhile it spread to Africa and the Indian archipelago. In 1852 it was taken to New South Wales; it had long previously been cultivated in most of the isl- ands of the Pacific. Several early writers mention the sugar cane as one of the indige- nous products of the United States, and it was said to grow in Virginia and in Louisiana ; of course some other large grass was mistaken for the sugar cane ; both the common reed (phrag- mites) and the southern cane (arundinaria) have a sufficiently near resemblance to sugar cane to lead a careless observer into this error. The plant appears to have been cultivated in this country for the first time about 1751, near the site of New Orleans, by some Jesuits from Santo Domingo. In 1758 the first sugar mill was built, a little further down the river, by M. Dubreuil. According to a statement of E. J. Forstall in De Bow's "Industrial Re- sources," vol. iii., p. 275, the manufacture of cane into sugar does not seem to have com- menced before 1764 ; but sugar is said to have been one of the staple products of the colony in 1770. After the revolutionary war it was prosecuted so successfully by emigrants from the United States that in 1803 there were 81 sugar estates on the Mississippi delta alone. The cession of Louisiana to Spain seems to have arrested the industry, as no accounts of sugar making are found until 1791, when the first sugar house under the Spanish govern- ment was erected by a Mr. Solis at Terre aux Bceufs, in the parish of St. Bernard. The next was established in 1796 on a plantation where now stands Carrollton. The success of this enterprise was the foundation of the sugar cul- ture in Louisiana. In 1818 the production was 25,000 hogsheads, and the cane was ground altogether by cattle, steam power not being introduced till 1822. The sugar-growing dis- trict in Louisiana is on both sides of the Mis- sissippi, from 57 m. below New Orleans to nearly 190 m. above ; on the Red river and its tributaries ; and on many of the bayous. But even Louisiana is rather too far north to allow of the perfect ripening of the plant, which is sometimes killed by the frost in the spring, and also injured in October and November. In Texas the crop is important, and cane is grown to a considerable extent in several of the other gulf states, especially in Florida, and to a limited extent in South Carolina, Tennes- see, and Kentucky. In the more northern localities it is profitably cultivated mainly for