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THE LITERATURE OF THE CANE.The development of the scientific study of the cane only dates back ageneration; this must be attributed to its decentralized position, and to theconfinement of its growth to districts remote from the older centres ofcivilization; nevertheless, a voluminous and polyglot literature has nowaccumulated.The earliest modernized treatise is that due to Wray, and published underthe title of the Practical Sugar Planter, in 1848; this deals with practice inthe West Indies and the Straits Settlements. Reynoso's JEnsayo scire el cultivode la cana de azucar was published in 1865, and criticises Cuban practice. Inthe same year Icery's Recherches sur le Jus de la Canne d Sucre, the result of hisMauritian experiences, appeared. Twenty years later three other notableFrench treatises were issued: Delteil's Le Canne d Sucre (1884) gives asuccinct account of the practices in Mauritius and Reunion ; Basset's Guide duPlanteur des Cannes (1889) is of the nature of a general treatise on agriculturespecialized with regard to cane planting; and Bonâme's Culture de la Canne d Sucred Guadeloupe (1888) contains the result of several years' experimental work,and is remarkable for a very complete detailed balance-sheet of the plant foodmaterial taken up by successive crops of cane.Ten years later a German text book by Krüger, Das Zuckerrohr und seineKultur, collated the earlier results of the Java 'Proef Stations,' and describedin great detail Javanese practice. The conditions in Louisiana have beendescribed by Stubbs in Sugar Cane (1897). The Egyptian industry hasbeen discussed by Tiemann in The Sugar Cane in Egypt (1903); and finallySedgwick in Relating to the Sugar Industry in Peru (1904) has given anaccount of the processes there followed.Of the increasing amount of recorded experimental results appearing withinthe past twenty years in the English periodical journals, and especially in theInternational Sugar Journal, attention may be directed to the papers ofHarrison, dealing especially with seedling canes, with manures, and with soils,and to the work which has been done by Watts and Bovell on kindred matter,and by Howard and Lewton-Brain on the pathology of the cane. In theEnglish Orient a not unnoteworthy feature is the publication of papers on thesugar cane by several natives of India.The United States are represented by records of work done at the LouisianaExperiment Station, and at that of the Hawaiian Sugar Planters' Association;and in this connection mention should be made of the work of C. A. Browne,dealing with manufacture and analysis, and of that in Hawaii concerned withagriculture and irrigation, initiated by Maxwell, and continued by Blouin andEckart. A more recent phase of the Hawaiian work, and one referred to atV.