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Birds and Nature, Vol. XI, No 2, February 1902

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<h2 id="c25">SUGAR-CANE. (Saccharum officinarum Lin.)</h2> <div class="verse"> Has God then given its sweetness to the cane, Unless His laws be trampled on—in vain? —Cowper: Charity, 190. </div> This highly important plant belongs to the grass family. It is perennial, with thick, succulent, jointed rhizomes, having root tufts at the joints. The stems are numerous, erect, cylindrical, growing to a height of six to twelve feet. Like the rhizome, the stem is jointed, the internodes being, however, much shorter toward the base. The leaves are numerous toward the apex, being deciduous toward the base. The apical tuftlike inflorescence is quite characteristic. The individual flowers are small and unattractive in appearance. One of the remarkable things about the plant is that the fruit never matures. It must be remembered that the plant referred to is entirely distinct from the so-called sugar-cane of the Central States from which sorghum molasses is made. It is very doubtful whether sugar-cane occurs anywhere in the wild state, at present. Authorities are quite unanimous in expressing it as their opinion that its original home was India. It is a plant that has been under cultivation for many centuries. Alexander the Great, in his invasions of India, found that the inhabitants of that country cultivated and used it extensively as a food article. Theophrastus mentions a “sweet salt” (sugar) which he obtained by evaporating the juice of an Indian reedlike plant, which was perhaps sugar-cane, though there is no conclusive evidence that the earlier Greeks and Romans were familiar with sugar; they employed honey quite universally. The “sweet cane” of Scripture is probably Andropogon calamus aromaticus, or sweet calamus, which was a native of India. It is presumed by some that the cane grown in China was originally native there. The cultivation of sugar-cane seems to have spread very rapidly. It early found its way to Persia and Arabia, and then from Arabia as a center has spread to the Mediterranean districts, Sicily, Cyprus, Spain and Italy. It found its way to Santo Domingo as early as 1494 and to Brazil early in the sixteenth century. At the present time cane is grown in nearly all tropical and sub-tropical countries, the Southern United States producing more than any other country. There are many varieties recognized by cultivators, differing in color, texture and other minor characteristics. Since cane does not ripen fruit, it is propagated by transplanting the rhizomes and top portions of stem, and after a field is once planted new crops are permitted to spring up from the old rhizomes, and this accounts for the awful tangle of the famous Southern canebrakes, which figured so extensively in the slave days, when these fields served as hiding places for the fugitive slaves. The ripe cane is cut close to the ground, the leaves stripped off and the tassel cut off. It is then carted to the cane mill and passed between large rollers, which express the juice, which is then clarified by means of lime, animal charcoal and blood. Heat further aids the purifying process by coagulating the albuminous matter, which, mixed with other impurities, rises to the surface as a scum and is removed by means of a special ladle. The lime combines with the free acid present and settles to the bottom. The juice is boiled until it acquires a proper tenacity, when it is passed into a cooler and allowed to crystallize. This sugar is then placed in large perforated casks and allowed to drain for two or three weeks, when it is packed into hogsheads and exported under the name of raw sugar or muscovado sugar. The drainings form molasses. Raw sugar is taken to the sugar refinery and purified by heating with water and bullocks’ blood, filtered through canvas bags and finally allowed to percolate very slowly through large cylinders containing freshly prepared, coarse-grained animal charcoal. The filtered liquor is then 96 boiled by the aid of steam. When sufficiently tenacious it is poured into conical molds, and when solidified the stoppers are removed to allow the treacle to drain off. The loaves from the molds are then sugared, as it is called, by pouring over them a saturated sugar solution, which, by slowly percolating through them, carries with it coloring matter and other impurities without dissolving the sugar crystals. When a saturated aqueous solution of sugar is allowed to cool slowly it forms large, beautiful crystals known as sugar or rock candy. Caramel is burnt sugar; it has a peculiar odor and loses its sweet taste, becoming bitter. It is used largely as a coloring agent for coloring liquids. Sugar has innumerable uses. As an article of food it is not surpassed, though it cannot support life alone, because it contains no nitrogen. It is the important ingredient in candies, pastries, sweetened drinks, etc. Molasses and treacle are much used and must not be confounded with the sorghum molasses made from the sugarcane of the Central States. Molasses and treacle sometimes have a peculiar and to many a very objectionable flavor, due to impurities present. Molasses, as well as treacle, when fermented, gives rise to rum. The popular notion that sugar is injurious to teeth is without foundation. It has no action on teeth whatever. If anything it has anti-septic properties and preserves the teeth. It is, however, undoubtedly true that the excessive consumption of sweets, pastries in particular, is bad for the digestion, as externally manifested by a dirty complexion and skin eruptions. As a whole sugar by itself is not injurious; it is an excellent food, a heat producer and easily assimilated. Americans, especially the American youth, are the great sugar consumers of the world. In medicine sugar is employed to disguise the taste of disagreeable remedies and to coat pills. It has no direct curative properties in disease. Albert Schneider. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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