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NEW REFINING PROCESS FOR SORGHUM SIRUP. 
Sorghum sugar-cane is now quite extensively cultivated in all the eastern, mid- 
dle, and western States. Withina few years it has been quite successfully grown 
in Connecticut, Rhode Island, and some parts of Massachusetts. The rapidity 
with which this new farm enterprise has extended and developed itself is proba- 
bly without a parallel in the annals of husbandry. In the short space of ten 
years, and in the face of many obstacles, this “ sweet reed” has been introduced 
and established as a permanent and an important farm staple, affording annually 
from thitty to thirty-five million gallons of its sirup. The introduction of this 
plant has wrought changes amounting almost to a revolution in the dietetic 
economy of vast regions of the country. Families which formerly congumed 
half a dozen gallons of tropical molasses in a year, now use fifty to a hundred 
gallons of sorghum. Its use in the family supplies to a large extent the place 
of butter and meat, particularly with children, and it is the universal testimony 
of those who have observed its effect upon the health of families using it freely, 
that it is attended with improved average health. ; 
Notwithstanding the extent to which sorghum is produced in the country, its 
consumption is confined almost wholly to the communities or districts in which it 
is grown. Very little finds its way into the channels of commerce and into city 
consumption, except that which comes through sugar refineries and reaches the 
general public in the form of sugar-house or golden sirup. Crude sorghum has a 
distinguishing flavor, which to many persons is not agreeable. This quality is 
easily removed by the ordinary process of refining as practiced in regular sugar 
refineries, but this operation involves an expensive apparatus and great skill, 
neither of which is practically attainable by the farmer. Heis therefore under 
the necessity of finding a home market for bis surplus product, or of selling it to 
refiners at much less than its real value, compared with products of the tropical 
eane. Within the lasttwo years the production of sorghum has been considerably 
in excess of the local demand, and the sirup’ has been forced into the general 
markets of cities, particularly in the west, where, there being no definite com- 
mercial standing for the article, farmers have been forced to sell at prices not 
fixed by the rule of intrinsic value, but by the rule of commercial cupidity. This 
has been somewhat discouraging to cane-growers, and all now realize the need 
of some simple and practical method of so refining or improving the quality of 
the sirup as to secure for it a proper position or rank among other sirups and 
saccharine substances in the market. 
Quite opportunely a very simple and inexpensive refining process has recently 
been discovered by Mr. Wm. Clough, of Cincinnati, editor of the Sorgo Journal, 
which promises to answer all the requirements of the business. This process 
has been exhibited in the rooms of the Agricultural Department during the last 
two weeks, both in refining crude sirup and in operating upon green juice. For 
the latter purpose a quantity of canes from the experimental grounds of the de- 
partment, which had been stored all winter, and were somewhat decayed, were 
pressed, and the juice of these canes, after being refined by the new process and 
subsequently concentrated, produced a delicious table sirup. A quantity of this 
sirup, together with sampies produced by refining crude sirups of various qualities, 
have been deposited in the department for public inspection. 
The process of refining is quite novel and interesting. No filters of any kind 
are used, no expensive or intricate apparatus is required, and the expense for 
ingredients used in the process is a mere trifle, not exceeding’ one or two cents 
a gallon. In refining old sirup the solution is reduced to the density of 16° or 
18° Beaumé. The refining agents are then added and thoroughly mixed with 
the juice or dilute sirup, and the liquid brought to the boiling point. At the 
boiling temperature a copious precipitate or coagulum appears. The fluid is, 
