In Malda, the canes are cut in January and February.  In N. Mooradabad, upon the low land, the canes are ripe in October, and upon the high lands a month later.  The fitness of the cane for cutting may be ascertained by making an incision across the cane, and observing the internal grain.  If it is soft and moist, like a turnip, it is not yet ripe; but if the face of the cut is dry, and white particles appear, it is fit for harvesting.—­(Fitzmaurice on the Culture of the Sugar Cane.)

Injuries.—­1. A wet season, either during the very early or in the concluding period of the cane’s vegetation, is one of the worst causes of injury.  In such a season, the absence of the usual intensity of light and heat causes the sap to be very materially deficient in saccharine matter.  But, on the other hand,

2. A very dry season, immediately after the sets are planted, though the want of rain may in some degree be supplied by artificial means, causes the produce to be but indifferent.  These inconveniences are of a general nature, and irremediable.

3. Animals.—­In India not only the incursions of domesticated animals, but in some districts of the wild elephant, buffalo, and hog, are frequent sources of injury.  Almost every plantation is liable, also, to the attack of the jackal, and rats are destructive enemies.

4. White Ants.—­The sets of the sugar cane have to be carefully watched, to preserve them from the white ant (Termes fatalis), to attacks from which they are liable until they have begun to shoot.  To prevent this injury, the following mixture has been recommended:—­

  Asafoetida (hing), 8 chittacks. 
  Mustard-seed cake (sarsum ki khalli), 8 seers. 
  Putrid fish, 4 seers. 
  Bruised butch root, 2 seers;
     or muddur, 2 seers.

Mix the above together in a large vessel, with water sufficient to make them into the thickness of curds; then steep each slip of cane in it for half an hour after planting; and, lastly, water the lines three times previous to setting the cane, by irrigating the water-course with water mixed up with bruised butch root, or muddur if the former be not procurable.[22] A very effectual mode of destroying the white ant, is by mixing a small quantity of arsenic with a few ounces of burned bread, pulverised flour, or oatmeal, moistened with molasses, and placing pieces of the dough thus made, each about the size of a turkey’s egg, on a flat board, and covered over with a wooden bowl, in several parts of the plantation.  The ants soon take possession of these, and the poison has a continuous effect, for the ants which die are eaten by those which succeed them.[23] They are said to be driven from a soil by frequently hoeing it.  They are found to prevail most upon newly broken-up lands.

In Central India, the penetration of the white ants into the interior of the sets, and the consequent destruction of the latter, is prevented by dipping each end into buttermilk, asafoetida, and powdered mustard-seed, mixed into a thick compound.