At Ghazepore the rains set in at the beginning of March, and planting then commences.  Near Calcutta the planting takes place in May and June.  In Dinajpoor and Rungpore the planting time is February.

About Commercolly it is performed in January.  The field is divided into beds six cubits broad, separated from each other by small trenches fourteen inches wide and eight inches deep.  In every second trench are small wells, about two feet deep.  The irrigating water flowing along the trenches fills the wells, and is taken thence and applied to the canes by hand.

Each bed has five rows of canes.  The sets are planted in holes about six inches in diameter, and three deep; two sets, each having three joints, are laid horizontally in every hole, covered slightly with earth, and over this is a little dung.

When, the canes are planted in the spring, the trenches must be filled with water, and some poured into every hole.  At the other season of planting the trenches are full, it being rainy weather; but even then the sets must be watered for the first month.

Mr. Haines says that in Mirzapore and the neighbouring districts, “in planting the cane they commence a furrow round the field, in which they drop the cuttings.  The second furrow is left empty; cuttings again in the third; so they continue dropping cuttings in every second furrow till the whole field is completed, finishing in the centre of the field.  The field remains in this state till the second or third day, when for two or three days in succession it is made even and hard upon the surface with the hengah, as before stated.”—­(Trans.  Agri-Hort.  Soc. vi. 5.)

Mr. Vaupell, in describing the most successful mode of cultivating the Mauritius sugar cane in Bombay, says, that “after the ground is levelled with the small plough, called ‘paur,’ in the manner of the cultivators, pits of two feet in diameter, and two feet in depth, should be dug throughout the field at the distance of five feet apart, and filled with manure and soil to about three inches of the surface.  Set in these pits your canes, cut in pieces about a foot and a half long, laying them down in a triangular from, thus /\.  Keep as much of the eyes or shoots of the cane uppermost as you can; then cover them with manure and soil; beds should next be formed to retain water, having four pits in each bed, leaving passages for watering them.  The cutting should be watered every third day during hot weather, and the field should always be kept in a moist state.”—­(Ibid. iii. 43.)

About Benares, the sets require, after planting, from four to six waterings, until the rains commence, and as many hoeings to loosen the surface, which becomes caked after every watering.  The moister nature of the soil renders these operations generally unnecessary in Bengal.