STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 161 



Any of you who have arranged to make a few gallons of syrup 

 can adopt this course. This is the explanation of the difference 

 between what is called a commercial process of making sugar 

 and syrup, and the usual process, which we may all use, in 

 which a man may use lime or not as he finds to his advantage. 

 As was said by our friend, if you don't know how to use lime you 

 had better not try it; but it don't injure the syrup for the uses of 

 most people. I could not use syrup that had acid in it. I am a little 

 dyspeptic. So with a great many others. The nicest quality of syrup 

 is that which is completely defecated, thoroughly pure; and that 

 will not be white syrup, either. The generation now coming up, 

 even men that are thirty years old, have been taught to believe 

 that clear, white syrup is pure syrup, and is the best to use. 

 Thirty years ago the Belcher refinery, of St. Louis, used to make 

 a very fine kind of sugar-house syruj). The process took all of 

 the acid out of the syrup. They had a very large sale for their 

 Byrup, and when they sent out a barrel of syrup, it had been put 

 through a process which made it pure. I bought a barrel of that 

 syrup, and I never troubled myself about its condition or charac- 

 ter any more than if it had been so much water. Nobody ever 

 heard of a barrel of it bursting; it was simply pure syrup. It 

 used to bring in the market about a dollar a gallon, or eighty- 

 five cents if sold by the barrel. That was unqualifiedly the best 

 syrup that has ever been sold in the United States; but to-day 

 there is no sugar-house man that makes that class of syrups. 

 We made that kind in our refinery simply because we didn't 

 have time to reboil the syrups. After it was ready to crystalize 

 we did not try to get the last grain of sugar out of the syrup, 

 hence our syrups were better than anybody would find in this 

 market that came from the East, or which was brought here, and 

 when compared with ours there was no comparison between 

 them. We sent a sample of it to Prof. Moore, who is probably 

 the best sugar chemist in America, — Gen. Le Due is acquainted 

 with him — he is the chemist of one of the largest sugar refineries 

 in New York City. He said, when he looked at this sample: 

 "There is no such article as that made in America, now." He 

 says: "That is a very excellent class of goods; it is too good for 

 the general market in competition with other syrups." It was 

 like the old sugar -house syrup that Mr. Belcher used to make 

 thirty years ago; it had a large proportion of sugar in it, hence 

 the difference between the two. It is not that defecated syrup 

 is not better, but if you want it for use in the bakeries, you want 

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