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with regard to the “diffusion process,” the discovery of Jules Robert, a sugar 
manufacturer of Austria, for extracting the saccharine matter from cane, beets, 
or other sugar-yielding plants: 
This process is called “ diffusion” from the fact that it is based upon the natu- 
ral process “‘endosmose and exosmose,” which means the.interchange of two 
liquids of different components, if these liquids are only separated from each 
other by an animal or vegetable cell-membrane. Where such two different 
liquids, as before stated, are brought into close contact and only separated by the 
membrane of a cell, an interchange of the liquid outside the cell and of the liquid 
within the cell takes place till both liquids become identical in their composition. 
Seientific men call this natural process ‘ membrane diffusion.” 
It is well known that the cane consists of a large number of cells, differing 
in size and form, and the contents of which are of a different nature according 
to the quality and situation of the cell. Within those cells are, as well as the 
sugar, the salts, in short, all the soluble matters which we find in the liquor 
obtained by our sugar mills, as also the insoluble substances remaining in the 
bagasse or offal. Each cell is enclosed by a membrane, as already remarked, 
giving it its shape and form. This membrane, however, is not absolutely 
closed; it has very minute perforations of larger and smaller dimensions, but 
the greater number are very small. We, therefore, may compare the cell mem- 
_ brane with a fine sieve, or with a sack of delicate, loose, and irregular texture, 
containing corpuscles of different sizes, and which corpuscles may, under favor- 
able circumstances, leave their enclosure with more or less facility, in exact 
proportion to the size of the perforations in the sieve-like cell-membrane. The 
large corpuscles within the cell-membrane must necessarily meet with more 
hindrance to escape through the cell-wall, for the reason that the cell-membrane 
has a greater number of very minute perforations than of large ones, in conse- 
quence of which the large corpuscles escape with difficulty, while the small 
corpuscles or grains, (the so-called erystalloides,) pass without hindrance through 
the minutest perforations of the cell-membrane. 
The relative proportion of the sizes, the volumina of the said corpuscles in 
the juice, like sugar, salts, albumen, &c., can dnly be found out by the atom 
weight and the specific weight of those minute bodies, and the way of calculat- 
ing it is to divide the ciphers representing the atom weight by the ciphers rep 
resenting the specific weight. Without entering further upon such calculation f 
will remark that bodies of a high atom weight, but small specific weight, like gum, 
pectin—the gelatinizing principle of plants—albumen, &e., have a large atom 
volume and represent the large or coarse particles of the cell, while bodies of 
small atom weight, but large specific weight, like sugar, salts, &c., represent- 
ing, consequently, finer corpuscles or grains, have a small atom volume. It is 
therefore apparent that the liability of soluble chemical compositions to leave 
their cell, or, according to our example, to go through the small meshes of the 
cell wall, is the greater the smaller the atom weight of the corpuscles is. We 
find, under otherwise identical circumstances, that this liability exists in a 
higher degree in such corpuscles which crystallize, like sugar, salts, asparagin, 
&c., and termed erystalloides, than in corpuscles not erystallizable, like gum, 
pectin, albumen, &c., termed by scientific men colloides. In short, the ten- 
dency of the matter within the cell membrane to leave this enclosing wall is in- 
creased proportionately with the smallness of the atom volume and the readiness 
of such matter to crystallize. 
We see by the above that the extraction of the saccharine matter from the 
cane or beets by means of “diffusion” is a microscopical, sifting process, en- 
tirely different from all other methods now in use in the European beet sugar 
manufactories or the American cane mills.to extract the saccharine matter from 
the sugar plants. This sifting out of the corpuscles within the cell membrane 
is done through the aid of water. It is clear that through the application of 
