de required four hundred vessels, averaging one hundred and fifty
tons burden.

The common sugar cane is a perennial plant, very sensitive to cold,
and is, therefore, restricted in its cultivation to regions bordering
on the tropics, where there is little or no frost. In the Eastern
hemisphere its production is principally confined to situations
favorable to its growth, lying between the fortieth parallel of north
latitude and a corresponding degree south. On the Atlantic side of
the Western continent, it will not thrive beyond the thirty-third
degree of north latitude and the thirty-fifth parallel south. On the
Pacific side it will perfect its growth some five degrees further
north or south. From the flexibility of this plant, it is highly
probable that it is gradually becoming more hardy, and will eventually
endure an exposure and yield a profitable return much further north,
along the borders of the Mississippi and some of its tributaries, than
it has hitherto been produced. In most parts of Louisiana the canes
yield three crops from one planting. The first season is denominated
"plant cane," and each of the subsequent growths, "ratoons." But,
sometimes, as on the prairies of Attakapas and Opelousas, and the
higher northern range of its cultivation, it requires to be replanted
every year. Within the tropics, as in the West Indies and elsewhere,
the ratoons frequently continue to yield abundantly for twelve or
fifteen years from the same roots.

The cultivation of this plant is principally confined to the West
Indies, Venezuela, Brazil, Mauritius, British India, China, Japan, the
Sunda, Phillippine, and Sandwich Islands, and to the southern
districts of the United States. The varieties most cultivated in the
latter are the striped blue and yellow ribbon, or Java, the red
ribbon, violet, from Java, the Creole, crystalline or Malabar, the
Otaheite, the purple, the yellow, the purple-banded, and the grey
canes. The quantity of sugar produced on an acre varies from five
hundred to three thousand pounds, averaging, perhaps, from eight
hundred to one thousand pounds.

Six to eight pounds of the saccharine juice of the plant, yield one
pound of raw sugar; from 16 to 20 cart-loads of canes, ought to make a
hogshead of sugar, if thoroughly ripe. The weight necessary to
manufacture 10,000 hhds of sugar, is usually estimated at 250,000
tons, or 25 tons per hhd. of 15 or 16 cwt.

The quantity of sugar now produced in our col