The selection of the seed should begin in the field (i. e., the best cane should be cut for seed) and continue through the process of preparing the seed. All defective seed should be discarded if the best and most profitable results are to be secured. It is best in some localities to grow cane especially for seed, so that at sowing time there will be at hand plant-cane of the right degree of maturity. The question of seed is one whose importance is directly proportional to the frequency of planting. When the cane can be ratooned for a long series of years, the securing of sufficient first-class seed i3 an easy matter. On the other hand, when cane is not ratooned, the seed question is of the greatest importance.
Subsequent cam—For the first few months after planting, the cane is actively cultivated. The com monest tool is a one-horse cultivator. This is followed by boys with hand-hoes. Cross-cultiva ting with machines is not much practiced, and, in consequence, the work of the horse-machines is completed by hand. The horse cultivators are mostly of the tooth pattern, but recently disk cultivators have come into vogue and promise to prove very useful in certain cases. In one ma chine these consist of two disks run on either side of a light beam, like that of a single-furrow plow.
In regions where the original timber was heavy it often happens that for some years the crop has to be cultivated by hand throughout. This is also the case on certain rocky lands that neverthe less yield good crops of cane. The object of the culture is to keep out weeds and to encourage the growth of the cane. The methods vary ac cording as the crop is grown without or with irrigation. In the latter case it is necessary to keep the rows of cane at the bottom of a furrow so as to accommodate the irrigation water. The land usually becomes "covered in" by the cane at the end of four to six months, and machine cultivation then ceases.
Harvesting and handling.
Cane is harvested by hand. Machine cutters have been invented and tried, but so far no machine has been a great success. It is hardly unsafe to predict that a cane-harvester will yet be invented. The cane-knife and the machete are the tools with which cane is cut. Where ratooning is frequent, the ratoon-cane is some times pulled in order to secure as much stalk as possible. The gain, however, is not great, as good cutters leave very little of the stalk in the ground. Immediately after the cane is cut it is started for the mill and, as a rule, is ground within twenty-four hours, as, owing to fermentation, the sucrose content diminishes at the rate of about one per cent per day.
Hand labor is necessary in loading the cane on to the carriers that take it to the mill. The cut. ters lay the stalks in rows after topping them. The roughness of the fields is such that a large load cannot economically be transported over them, and hence small loads are taken short distances to the carriers which are arranged on definite transporta tion lines that radiate from the mill as perfectly as the conformation of the plantation admits. These intermediate carriers vary all the way from laborers' shoulders, through small two-mule sleds to carts and wagons of small capacity. The permanent ways are roads, canals, wire cables or flumes. The roads may be for teams of horses, mules, oxen, or steam traction-engines, or they may be railroads for loco motive engines hauling lines of trucks, varying in capacity up to twenty tons. The commonest arrange ment is the latter, and much ingenuity has been exercised in the invention of engines, trucks and portable rails adapted to this purpose. When the cane lands are along river-banks the various creeks emptying into the river are utilized to carry punts, and artificial canals for the punts are sometimes provided. The latter are as a rule adapted also to furnish additional drainage. The punts and tugs present no peculiar features. The mill carriers come to the waterside and the cane is dumped on to the carriers with the aid of machinery, or more often without. On certain plantations having steep grades, gravity cable-cars are in operation, the loaded cars at the top of the incline drawing up the empties, thus affording an economical power. Plantations of this character are sometimes sup plied with overhead cable-systems for carrying light, single-wheel trolleys capable of taking several hundredweight of cane. The cane is hauled to the upper trolley-station, attached to the trolley in bundles of requisite size, and sent by gravity to the mill with great speed. The wheels are packed back up the hills on the backs of mules. Where water is abundant, the cane is sent down to the mill in wooden flumes carrying a stream several inches deep, the distant flumes being V-shaped and of two boards, the mill flumes larger and of three boards.