Sorghum.
--A correspondent of the Lynchburg
Republican, writing from
Charlottesville, Va., about sorghum, says:
‘
I am glad to inform you that quite a number of the farmers in
Albemarle county have turned their attention to the cultivation of sorghum, or
Chinese sugar cane, and they have been quite successful.
Col. T. J. Randolph will, I hear, make 600 gallons of molasses;
Frank Miner 800;
R. W. Lewis 850;
Alex,
Rives,
Mr. O. Richards, and others, nearly or quite as much.
In all parts of the county the sugar cane mills are grinding out the juice, and the furnaces are boiling it daily and nightly into molasses.
In
Charlottesville Messrs. Harris and
Spooner have an iron mill (manufactured by them) with steam power in operation, which pretty effectually crushes out the juice from the cane, and with their boiling apparatus, consisting of one iron kettle, holding 55 gallons, and an iron oblong pan of 60 gallons, they make every five hours about 60 gallons of molasses.
With more boiling pans and furnaces the number of gallons of molasses could be greatly increased, as the crushing mill, if kept in operation all day, could crush out five times as much juice as is now required for the furnace in operation.
Wagon loads of sugar-cane from the farms near town are seen daily passing through our town to the iron foundry, where it is manufactured into molasses; and many of our citizens, ladies and gentlemen, and any amount of boys, are attracted thither to witness a new thing under the sun, which the exigencies of the times have ushered into being, and which it is to be hoped will continue as a fixed fact in times to come.
Gen. John H. Cocke, of
Fluvanna county, is trying the experiment to test the qualities of sorghum or the manufacture of sugar, and
Professor Maupin, at the
University, is also engaged in analysing its properties for that purpose.
Broom-corn and sorghum being of the same species, if grown near together, will cause the pollen to mix, and effectually destroy the latter, and the seed of sorghum in the next planting will produce nothing but broom-corn.
This has been tested by farmers in this county, as one of them has just informed me.
’
