A lecture on the geography of plants / By John Barton.

  • John Barton
Date:
1827
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A lecture on the geography of plants / By John Barton. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    skimming off the impurities which rise to the surface. The same juice, when fermented and distilled, produces rum. The Sugar-cane is said to be a native of China; it certainly be- longs, at all events, to the Old World, and was introduced by Europeans into the West Indies, whence we derive our principal supply of sugar. Since the opening of the trade with India, a considerable quantity of sugar has however been brought from that country; and more undoubtedly would be brought, had not parlia- ment laid an extra duty of 10s. per cwt. on East Indian sugar, for the protection of the West India proprietors. The Coffee-tree is very extensively cultivated in the West Indies, where it chiefly occupies the higher grounds, the plains being occupied in the raising of sugar. It demands a mean temperature from 70° to 75° *. Another plant largely cultivated in the tropical regions of both hemispheres, is that which yields Indigoi. It is a low shrub, bearing a pea-shaped blosssom. In the preparation of indigo, the whole of the plant is steeped in a cistern of water till fer- mentation takes place ; the liquor is then drawn off into another vessel, where it is continually beat and agitated with a kind of buckets fixed