104 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



has tasted old or well-dried raisins has observed the hard 

 lumps of sugar which frequently form, of considerable size, 

 under the skin-covering. These are lumps of glucose which 

 result from the evaporation of the moisture in which it Avas 

 held in solution in the grape. These lumps are deficient in 

 sweetness, as has been observed from the earliest times. If 

 this substance was supplied in large quantities from grapes 

 or raisins, it would sell at a low price in the market. If a 

 grocer sold it for pure sugar (cane-sugar), it would probably 

 come back to him again, and he would rightfully be charged 

 with fraud. No shrewd dealer or manufacturer would sell 

 it by itself as sugar ; but those dishonest in the trade would 

 mix it with cane-sugar, and thus dispose of it with less risk 

 of exciting suspicion. This is now a form of fraud of enor- 

 mous magnitude, as will be presently shown. 



During the wars of Napoleon I., early in the present 

 century, he established the famous Continental blockade by 

 which all products of England and her colonies were ex- 

 cluded from the markets. This, of course, made sugar 

 scarce and dear in France, and stimulated search for prod- 

 ucts which might be substituted. The grape-crop of France 

 was enormous, and, as commerce was destroyed, it was useless 

 to make wine ; so attention was turned to extracting the 

 sweet principle of grapes. Sirups and sugars were made 

 from grape-juice in large quantities; and Napoleon ordered it 

 to be used in the palace, as an encouragement to its produc- 

 tion. He issued several decrees in regard to its manu- 

 facture ; and the celebrated chemists of the time — Proust, 

 Berthollet, Parmentier, and others — were kept busy striving 

 to perfect the products. Montalivet, the great minister of 

 the interior in Napoleon's cabinet, in one of his reports 

 states that it has been ascertained that the grape-sugar 

 equivalent of cane is a little over two and one-half to one^ 

 This is not far from correct. 



Thus it is shown that the chemists of France were making 

 glucose more than seventy years ago from grapes ; and, if 

 they had known {hat it could be made as well from potatoes, 

 corn, or any other cheap substance holding starch, the dis- 

 covery might have retarded the great progress that soon 

 followed in producing cane-sugar from beet-juice. 



It was as early as 1747 that Margraft' made his experi- 



