In looking over the map of the Old World we see two extensive desert regions, that of Northern Africa and that of Central Asia. And when we realize that the only drawback to our beautiful California, is a climate too dry to be perrectly adapted to many of the products of the moist climate of Europe, and the scarcely less moist climate of the Eastern States, it becomes a subject of interest, of deep interest, to learn how mankind live in the dry regions of the earth, and what the earth produces in those dry countries.

Notably among those products suited to very dry climates is the sorghum or broom-corn family. History does not reach back to the beginning of its culture.

The Corn of Egypt,

spoken of in the beautiful story of "Joseph and his Brethren," in the old Bible, were varieties of this family, the brown and the white Dhoura, sorghum dura and sorghum cernuum, known in our State as the white and brown Egyptian corn. It is still the chief product of the dry region of Northern Africa. Baker, the great African traveler, in his "Travels in Africa," speaks of it as giving under favorable conditions the enormous yield of 500 bushels, 30,-000 lbs., annually per acre. From my experience in the rich soil and the hot climate of our valley I believe such a yield possible. It has here yielded nearly half of that amount, and yet it was cut down by frost in midst of its growth, while in the climate of the region where Baker saw it, it would have gone on producing a crop every month for the remaining four months that would have made up the entire year.

China Corn.

While these have been feeding for thousands of years the people of the dry regions of Africa and Arabia, the no less ancient, and, in agriculture, more skillful millions of the dry regions of Central and Northern China have been cultivating the same plant, and from their superior culture and selection of seed and grown in their shorter seasons it now conies to us as an improved and earlier, better-yielding variety. Botanists have given it the distinction of a separate variety under the name of sorghum halapense. Rev. A. Wylie, D. D., in his article on China in the new American Cyclopedia, vol. iv, page 445, speaks of it under the name of "Millet," as the chief crop of the great plains of China; and from two years experience in raising it in California, I can positively assert that its growth here equals that of its native country. A hundred million people have eaten it to-day, will eat it all the days of their lives as their chief article of food.

Sugar Canes.

While these varieties were being grown wholly for their enormous yield of nutritive grain, and yearly improved in this respect, there was another equal demand to be supplied, that was for sugar or its equivalent—syrup. Selection of seed through many years developed this quality in one variety, and this grown for that purpose, and improved by centuries page 52 of care and culture by the skillful Chinese, gives us the Chinese sugarcane of to-day, a plant very valuable for forage and for syrup and sugar production. A like want and a like prolonged effort among the half-civilized people of Nubia and Abysinnia resulted in producing the Imphee or African cane, the most luxuriant-growing and best sugar-producing, and best forage plant in our State at the present time. Perhaps, however, it will divide the forage merits with Amber cane, a hybred between Imphee and Chinese sorghum. They both give an immense yield of sweet, tender, rapid-growing stalks and leaves, of which all kinds of stock are very fond, and which possess superior food qualities, while their enormous growth after the plants are permanently rooted, is almost independent of wet or drouth, not being affected by excess of either; and in our climate making succeeding growths year after year from the same roots.

Broom Corns.

Our ancestors of Southern Europe being supplied with wheat, rice and other grains, and their demand for sugar being otherwise supplied, had no no occasion to cultivate sorghum for either of these purposes. But they, too had an unsupplied want. They wanted materials for brooms and brushes, and a variety of sorghum containing long, tough fibers or straws connecting the seeds with the stalk, promised the desired article. Centuries of careful collection of seed and culture, with a view to this end, have given us the varieties of broom corn of the present day. Notable among which are the dwarf, which here on my rich land and with abundance of water grows only four feet in hight. Also, the evergreen variety, which, for toughness, even fineness and weight of straw, surpasses all other kinds.

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.