Image provided by: University of Oregon Libraries; Eugene, OR
About The west shore. (Portland, Or.) 1875-1891 | View Entire Issue (June 1, 1885)
THE WEST SHORE. 181 SORGHUM. AT a recent meeting of the New York Chamber of Commerce Dr. Peter Collier, who has made a special study of the cultivation and uses of sorghum, made an address, from whioh we extract as follows: The history of sorghum with us only dates back to 1853, when William K Prince imported from France a little sorghum seed, which M. De Montigny, the Frenoh Consul at Shanghai, China, had sent to the Geographical Society of Paris in 1850. In 1857 Leonard Wray, an English merchant, brought from Natal, South Africa, sixteen varieties of sorghum seed. To those last the name " imphee " was given, while the former was known as the " Chinese sugar cane." And yet this plant, whose merit as a sugar produoing plant appears to have been recognized thirty yearB ago, had come to be regarded as mainly valuable for forage or as a source of an inferior quality of syrup. It was a great error obtaining in Great Britain and on the Continent, as also in our own country, that the East Indians were a rice-eating people. Fully nine-tenths of them subsist mainly upon sorghum seed. In Turkestan sorghum is the main coroal, an, owing to the excessive droughts, no othors could be successfully grown. In the northern part of China sorghum was grown as maize is with us, and for the same purposes, and it so entirely satisfied the wants of the poople that it had practically excludod maize. I have personally ob tained within a few months from Calcutta oloven varietios of sorghum seed, twenty-one varietios from the Dharwar district in Western India, three from Hong Kong, three from Foo Chow, two from Seuegambia in addition to eight varieties from Northern China, three from Cawn pore, India, and twenty-two from Natal, South Africa; in all, seventy-throe distinct varietios of sorghum not one of these appearing to be idoutical with any of the numer ous varieties cultivated in the United States; and it is to be remembered that none of these varioties has ever been cultivated in either of these countries for any purjose other than the seed and such forage as might bo secured from the stalks and blades. Indood, it is probably true that for the past thousand years the soed of sorghum has furnished food in greater abundance for both man and beast than have wheat and maize oombined. It is admitted that the demands upon olimato and Mil of the sorghum, as also the details of cultivation, are practically identical with those of maize, although it is a matter of moment that the sorghum, provided only it secures a good start in the early portion of the season, is capable of withstanding not only, but even flourishing during a drought which would prove fatal to maize. This quality would seem to ronder it esocially adapted to the soil and climate of the "Inland Empire." Ed. The chemical composition of sorghum seed shows it to be practically identical with maize; and for the purposes of food or fattening, for the production of alcohol, glucose or starch, the one msy be substituted for the other, and there is no reason for any difference in their commercial value. Grown as Indian corn is grown, for the seed alone, sorghiiul is orop of equal villus with corn, and we are prepared to believe that upon a plantation pro perly located with rermrd the mill, end with rrpnoray in management, the Beed will pny the entire expense of cultivation of crop and the delivery of tho cane at the mill, as ono of our largest sorghum planters has assured me. The average amount of available sugar present in the juice aotually expressed, from a crop actually grown, equaled 1,960 pounds por acre, while the amount of avail able sugar aotually present in the crop, on the suppiei tion of 90 per cont of juioo, was an avorage of 2,853 pounds m acre. These certainly are astonishing results, and since thoy have been published there have been, in certain quarters, persistent and continuous efforts to oast discredit upon them, despite tho fact that a committee of the National Aoademy of Sciences (our highest scientiflo authority) had unanimously indorsed the methods by whioh those rosults had been obtained as being "among the Iwst known to science," The bagasso from sorghum contains not only a largo amount of sugar, but other valuable food constituents, and it is, as it oomes from tho mill, iu a mechanical con dition admirably adapted for tho silo and for eating. It apK'ars from averages of a largo nuiulsr of analyses, that the actual money value of bagasse for food is almost exactly double that of ordinary ensilage; and since many of our fanners are engaged in preparing and feeding ensilage, it is worth while for them to consider the value for this purpose of the bagasso of the sorghum mills, at prosent used as fuel or for the manure imt. The bagasse from which the sugar had been thus removed was after, ward submitted to the ordinary process for tho prepara. tion of pnor pulp, and a samjdo was made, which, Uxn being submitted to one of our largest papor mnnufaotur ors, was pronounced to lo of excellent quality, and worth four and a half cents per pound. A ton of cauo would yield at least ninety pounds of such pulp, so that, with an average of ten tons to the acre, there might be mado an amount of pulp worth $10.50. It is to be considered tliat each stop in the process to which the cane is sub jected increases its value for the production of pulp, and as there is nothing in the treatment which forbids its economical employment upon hundreds of tons of ex hausted bagasse, there is reason to believe that ultimately this industry may be added to the production of sugar from sorghum cane, thus utilixing a waste product and increasing the profits on tho crop. I think, therefore, that it may fairly Im claimed for sorghum, from the facta which have Ihmui prcseutiid, that wo have in it a orop fully tho equal of Indian corn for iU seed, and in it stalks fully as rich in sugar as is the sugar cauo of Louisiana, and besidi furnishing, iu its bagasse, a material for tho silo twice as valuable as common ensil age for food, or which bagasse may, by diffusion, jiuld at least an average increase in sugar and syrup of 50 per cent over that obtained by the mill, and then furnish to the manufacturer of paper excellent material for pulp.. The statement made atove are worthy the consideration of our faruurs and papur manufacture! s.