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VARIETIES OF THE CANE.Home of the Sugar Cane.—The place whence the cane wasintroduced has been the subject of speculation and controversy, India and theSouth Pacific being the places most in dispute. In 1891 Kobus 18 remarked onthe differences between the Ukh canes of India and those cultivated in Java ;this difference is apparent from Hadi's description of the former, and is sopronounced that it seems fair to suggest that the cultivated varieties ofcane (elsewhere than in India) and the Ukh canes are not merely varietiesbut distinct species.Of the varieties cultivated elsewhere than in India it is certain that theOtaheite cane (or canes), the Tanna canes, the Cavengerie cane, and theEscambine canes are indigenous to the South Pacific; the Cheribon caneshave certainly been known in Java for generations, bat the writer has neverfound any authoritative statement that they are the indigenous. The literatureof the cane shows, too, that these Cheribon canes have also been known in theSouth Pacific from early times, and even the name 'Otaheite' is in someplaces (cp. supra) attached to these canes. In addition, the writer has beenauthoritatively informed that canes of the Cheribon type were known in Indiaas Otaheite canes at the end of the eighteenth century. There seems, then,much reason to suppose that the Cheribon canes are not indigenous to Java, butoriginated from the South Pacific; if, as seems reasonable, this speculationconnecting these canes with the South Pacific is correct, then all the standardcultivated varieties of cane originated in the South Pacific, that is to say eastof "Wallace's line, and they form, at the very least, a type of cane very farremoved from those found to the "West.The statement that the 'Bourbon' cane came to that island from theMalabar coast is often found; the original statement the writer has never beenable to trace, and at the most the statement only implies that the vessel thatbrought the stock to Bourbon cleared from that locality.The evidence that the sugar cane is indigenous to the New World seemsquite unsatisfactory.REFEREMCES IN CHAPTER IV.1. S. C 220.2. Stubbs' Sugar Cane, p. 66.3. S. 0., 273.4. Formen unD Farben Saccharum officinarum.5. Bull. 26, Agric. H.S.P.A.6. The Practical Sugar Planter, pp. 1-18.7. Daa Zuckerrohr, p. 124.43