270 



THE SUGAR CONTENT OF MAIZE STALKS. 



he maintains, as the result of his investigations, that the cane- 

 sugar content of the juice in the stalks increases to such an 

 extent that " it becomes practically a sugar cane." Stewart 

 further states that. " coincident with this, as a secondary result, 

 and equally important, is the circumstance that there is very 

 little deposition of the hard siliceous matter which forms the 

 outer coating of the maize stalk and becomes incorporated with 

 the peripheral fibres when the grain is allowed to ripen, thereby 

 preventing the best of the fibrous matter from being utilised 

 for the manufacture of pulp ; in consequence of this, he goes on 

 to say, the whole substance of the stalk is resolvable into pulp, 

 and cellulose of the finest quality for paper and for all the 

 higher uses for which cotton cellulose is now employed.'' 



In an article appearing in the Aincrican Industries for Feb- 

 ruary, 1910, an account is given of the above process, and the 

 following table of analyses quoted, as a typical case of the 

 average results obtained, to show the progressive stages of 

 sugar accumulation from the beginning to the close of the period 

 of saccharine development. 



Table i. 



In this table it will be seen that the sucrose content of the 

 juice at the time of cobbing was 6.7 per cent., and that six weeks 

 later it had increased to 14.66 per cent., a rise of 118 per cent., 

 whilst at the same time the amount of glucose and solids not 

 sugar remained practically unaltered. 



Stewart's process has been investigated on a small scale 

 at the Agricultural Laboratories, Salisbury, this year. The 

 maize used in the test was a white dent variety planted on the 

 25th January, but the crop unfortunately made a somewhat poor 

 growth on account of the lateness of planting and infestation 

 of stalk borers. The cobs were removed in the milky stage, 

 and only the best stalks were selected for analysis; any portion 

 attacked by borer being carefully discarded. 



