22 STATE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



That the person receiving such bounty shall make a report to the State board of agricult- 

 ure, duly verified, of all the parts of the process employed in the manufacture of such 

 sugar, together with a definite statement of the yield : And provided further, That it 

 shall contain at least 80 per cent crystallized sugar, as determined by the polariscope, 

 under the direction of the State board of agriculture. 



The period covered by the above act has now expired. Since its enact- 

 ment Mr. Root of Hudson has been the only person who has made appli- 

 cation for the bounty thus offered by the State. During the past five years 

 he has applied for and received bounty as follows : 



The following letters from Mr. Koot will be of interest : 



Hudson, Mich., October 26, 1887. 

 Henry G. Reynolds, Agricultural College, Mich.: 



Dear Sir, — Yours of the 22d at hand. I shall continue to make sorghum sugar 

 more or less, and it will pay without the bounty when we have a good season for cane 

 or corn — especially so when we use the new process of washing out the sweet instead 

 of rolling it out of the cane. By the new process we get all, or nearly all, of the 

 sweet there is in the cane, whereas the best roller miUs only get one-third. 



Yours truly, 



DANIEL ROOT. 



Hudson, Mich. , November 10, 1887. 



Secretary H. G. Reynolds, Agricultural College, Mich. : 



Dear Sir, — In reply to yours of 28th ult. : A good corn season is a good cane season. 

 We have never made any sugar from corn stalks. The juice of the corn stalks, when 

 the ears are in the dough stage, or just before the kernels harden, is_n early or quite 

 as sweet as that of amber cane, but it will not yield as many gallons per acre. Some 

 varieties of corn are more juicy and sweeter than others. 



When we get our diffusion plant in operation I will give you a full description of it. 

 It will be on a smaller scale than the one used this year with such good results, at 

 Fort Scott, Kansas. 



The process of diffusion is to slice the cane into thin chips, then run these chips into 

 a battery of ten or a dozen cells, each of which holds about one ton. The cells are 

 filled at the top, and, when the sweet is all extracted, discharged at thp bottom. The 

 cells can be closed water tight, and are connected with pipes to run warm water in at 

 the top and out at the bottom, and thence into the top of the next cell, and so on 

 through the battery. Upon issuing from the last cell the water contains nearly as 

 great a proportion of sweet as does the juice from a roller mill, and it is then run into 

 tanks for defecation. 



When a cell has all the sweet washed out, it is disconnected from the rest of the sys- 

 tem, the water forced out of it by compressed air, and the chips discharged. It is 



