THE SUGAR CONTENT OF MAIZE STALKS. 



By George Neville Blacks haw, B.Sc, F.C.S. 



The presence of sugar in the juice of maize stalks was 

 known as far back as the year 15 19, and mention is made of 

 the manufacture in America of molasses from the juice in the 

 year 1777. 



At a meeting of the Linnean Society in 1843, a paper on 

 the manufacture of sugar from maize stalks in the State of 

 Indiana was read by Prof. Croft, who went so far as to affirm 

 that the juice contained three times the sweetening principle of 

 beet, five times that of the maple, and equalled that of the 

 sugar-cane grown in the United States of America. Croft's 

 paper attracted considerable attention, and attempts were made 

 in India to obtain crystallised maize sugar, but without success, 

 the juice after prolonged boiling and subsequent cooling showing 

 no signs of granulation. 



The production of a fair quality of S3'rup in \'ermont in 

 the year 1844, and the establishment of a factory in France 

 about 1850 for the production of sugar from maize stalks, are 

 also recorded, the French factory failing owing to the develop- 

 ment of the beet sugar industry. 



It will therefore be seen that whilst the idea of manufac- 

 turing sugar and molasses from maize stalks is by no means 

 new, attempts made to utilise them for the production of sugar 

 on a large scale have hitherto proved unsuccessful. 



During the years 1880 and 1881, Dr. Collier, at that time 

 Chemist of the Department of Agriculture at Washington, car- 

 ried out lengthy investigations into the sugar content of the juice 

 of several varieties of maize, and to his results, which are to be 

 found in a work on Sorghum published by him in 1884, I shall 

 have occasion to refer later in the paper. 



In the past the production of maize sugar has never gone 

 beyond the experimental stage ; attention has, however, been 

 drawn to the matter again in America by Professor F. L. 

 Stewart, who has for many years devoted much of his time to 

 devising a profitable means of utilising the maize plant for the 

 production of sugar, paper pulp and alcohol. Stewart recently 

 stated in a course of correspondence that whilst the manufacture 

 of sugar, paper and alcohol from maize stalks is not yet fairly 

 established, it had reached a stage of development which gives 

 assurance that wherever maize can be grown to advantage, the 

 three main products — cane sugar, paper pulp and alcohol — are 

 producible from the respective parts of the plant of unexcelled 

 quality, and at a very much lower cost than from any other 

 known source. In a maize-growing country such as ours this is 

 naturally a statement of considerable moment, and demands 

 careful investigation. 



Briefly stated. Stewart's process for the production of the 

 raw material consists of removing the cobs in the milky 

 instead of allowing the plants to mature their grain ; by so 



