Boisson

1857 · Best.-Nr. 56060 — New York: C.M. Saxton & Co. Agricultural Book Publishers No. 140 Fulton St. 1857. 8vo. 106 pp. plus 11 1 pp. publisher’s catalogue. Woodcut-engraved frontisp. 1 text engraving. Original printed softcovers minor chipping head & foot of spine slight chipping couple lower corners dustsoiling still a VG bright copy. First edition of one of the earliest American studies on Chinese Sugarcane Sorghum and the possibilities that this was the sorghum plant that American farmers hoped would grow in the Northern United States and definitive work on growing harvesting and distilling sorghum. A variety of “Chinese Sugarcane” was imported by Father Du Halde from Sichuan China in 1851 where it was quickly adopted also under the name of “Northern Chinese or Shanghai Sugarcane” as a crop to provide sugars for alcoholic products filling the void left by the grape crop failure in the 1850s. Chinese Sugarcane seeds were first brought into United States by Jay Browne Esq. in 1854 and a few intrepid American nurseries began planting and determining if it could be planted and harvested profitably in the North. Hyde writes that in his test crop he was able to secure a dark sugar from the cane molasses and notes that it will be of tremendous value in producing alcohol and confectionaries and that the Sorghum remnants could be fed to livestock. Hyde 1825-1898 worked with his father James Hyde in developing the very successful nursery emphasizing fruit trees ornamental trees and cash crops. He was a pioneering environmentalist who founded the first improvement society in the United States the Newton Centre Tree Club whose purpose was to emphasize beautifying the roads and commons in Massachusetts. He was Newton MA first mayor after the city was incorporated in 1873 and was also successful in persuading the Boston & Albany RR to acquire the existing single-track line of the Charles River Railroad to aid his nursery business. Original editions of this work have become quite scarce in the trade. See: Deborah Jean Warner Sweet Stuff: An American History of Sweeteners from Sugar to Sucralose pp. 252-253; Watts Dictionary of Chemistry and the Allied Branches 1869 Vol. V p. 354; Newton’s First Mayor: A Hard Act to Follow Historic Newton 2019; Walnut Grove Nursery The New England FarmerVol. IV 1852 p. 538 C.M. Saxton & Co., Agricultural Book Publishers, No. 140 Fulton St., paperback