Summary.

The nine here mentioned—three valuable for grain, three for sugar, syrup and forage, and three for broom corn—are all that I have found of great value in over twenty sorghums which I have tested during the last dozen years. But studying their habits of growth and the products of the countries where they are grown, led me last year to import the seed of an allied plant from the East Indies—the Penicillaria Spicata—which I find is also cultivated in other parts of our country. Mr. Henderson, an old, reliable market-gardener, of New York City, raised an acre of it for feed during the past Summer. He publishes an account of it 011 page 420 of the Agriculturist. He says:

"The millet was sown in drills eighteen inches apart; eight quarts to the acre, on the 15th of May. * * The first cutting was made July 1st, 45 days after sowing; it was then seven feet high, covering the whole ground. The crop weighed green, 30 tons per acres; when dried; tons of hay per acre. After cutting, a second growth started and was cut August 15th, 45 days from time of the first cutting. Its hight was nine feet, weight fifty-five tons per acre, green; eight tons dried. The third crop started as rapidly as the second, but the cool September nights lessened is tropical luxuriance, so that this crop, which was cut on October 1st, only weighed ten tons green and one and one-half tons dried. * * The aggregate weight was ninety-five tons page 53 of green fodder in 135 days from time of sowing, and sixteen tons when dried to hay. * * There is little doebt that the Pearl Millet is equally as nutritious as corn fodder, which it resembles even more than it does any of the other millets. We found that all our horses and cattle ate it greedily, whether green or dry. * * Though our Northern seasons may be too short to mature the seeds, our experiments show what abundant crops may be expected. It presents a new feature in our agriculture and I feel sure that within ten years we shall wonder how we ever got on without it."

In Moore's Rural New Yorker of November 2d a full-page illustration is given of a bunch grown from a single seed. The editor says in describing it:

"Many of the stems were nearly the same hight, the highest being ten feet one inch. Three feet from the ground the circumference was thirteen feet nine inches. * * There were fifty-two stalks, the weight of which was forty-two and one-half pounds."

On my farm, here in Fresno, the growth has been more than three times as great as that above given by Mr. Henderson, but the period of growth was over one hundred days longer, and that, with our rich soil, hot climate and abundant irrigation, fully accounts for the difference in favor of California growth of this or any other plant exactly suited to our climate.

John Torry, late of Westminster, is now in the employ of Spear, Meade & Co., of San Francisco, and has re-moved to the city to take up his residence. Mr. Torry is traveling among the fruit growers of the Coast quite extensively, and we expect to hear from him occasionally.