418 FARMERS' INSTITUTES. 



these analyses show far more conclusively than those of the small samples 

 the general character of the sorghum juices which have been manufactured 

 into sugar in this country during the last seven years. The following is the 

 average of the means of all the analyses : 



Sucrose -.. 8.64 per cent. 



Glucose 4.59 



Totalsolids 15.19 



The mean co-efficient of purity of these juices is 5(5.2 per cent., and the 

 percentage of available sugar, on the basis of difference between per cent 

 sucrose and sum of the percentages of other solids, 1.89. On the basis of an 

 average extraction of 60 per cent of the weight of the cane in juice, the yield 

 of sugar per ton of cane for the time indicated, supposing there was no loss 

 in manufacture, would be 22.68 pounds. These figures need no comment; 

 they show beyond any question that the failure to make sorghum sugar 

 profitably in this country has not been due alone to defective machinery nor 

 lack of skill, but chiefly to the quality of the sorghum cane which has been 

 used. 



These practical results are strongly in coutrast with the conclusions of the 

 committee of the National Academy of Sciences, who. basing their state- 

 ments on the results of the analyses of small samples of carefully cultivated 

 canes, reached results which in no manner represent the actual data of experi- 

 ence. This committee say : ^'These analyses have shown the constitution of 

 the juices of each variety at the successive stages in the development of the 

 growing plant. They not only confirm the well known fact of the presence 

 of sugar in the juices of these plants in notable quantity, but they also estab- 

 lish beyond cavil, what seems surprising to those who have not examined the 

 facts, that the sorghum particularly holds in its juices, when taken at the 

 proper stage of development, about as much cane sugar as the best sugar cane 

 of tropical regions." 



The danger of basing data for a great industry on the results of the 

 analyses of small plots of sorghum, produced under exceptionally favorable 

 circumstances, is increased when it is done by such high authority. But 

 what shall we think of the care exercised by the committee in forming its 

 conclusions on this matter, when we find them at the same time endorsing 

 the cornstalk sugar lunacy in the following terms? 



"In 1880 over 62,000,000 acres of our land were in maize, or 38 per cent of 

 all the cultivated land of the United States. The amount of sugar thus 

 apparently lost, calculated on the results obtained at the Department of Agri- 

 culture in the last three years, is equal to the present product of the entire 

 world" 



I will add that the committee were extremely modest, in considering the 

 basis of their conclusion, to limit the cornstalk sugar to the whole sugar pro- 

 duction of the world. The amount of cornstalks, on the basis of their com- 

 putations, was over 500,000,000 tons. The mean percentage of sucrose in 

 stalks, calculated from the percentage in the juice, namely, 11.6, is a little 

 over ten per cent. The total quantity of sugar, therefore, which was wasted 

 in the cornstalks for that year would be 50,000,000 tons. But this is a 

 theoretical computation. Let us take the actual yields which the committee 

 found had been obtained ; they say : 



"It will be seen that in successive years, there was also obtained from the 



