PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION B. By Es 
can be little doubt that, by careful selection of cane and manures, 
we can increase considerably the production of sugar per acre, 
still we can hardly hope that there can, in a short time, be any 
improvement in the sweetness of the cane at all corresponding 
with that obtained in Europe in a few years in beet-roots. Sugar- 
cane is one of those grasses which has been hitherto believed not 
to produce fertile seed, and as propagation is therefore effected. by 
planting cuttings, no one has attempted to produce by selection 
of seed—as is done with the beet—that marked increase in 
saccharine contents which is so much desired ; and any advance 
in this direction, if actually obtained at all by continually planting 
the sweetest canes, can only be made by slow and painful steps. 
Fertile seeds have, however, been lately found by scientific 
observers in the West Indies and in Java, and as their success 
in raising plants from such seeds will be emulated by hundreds 
of planters all over the world, it seems possible that we may now 
be on the threshold of an important change in our methods of 
propagating cane, and that we may have grounds for hoping that, 
in the early future, we may bring about a sensible improvement 
in the sweetness of sugar-cane, which has not, so far as our know- 
ledge extends, been as yet increased, even if it has not, in some 
countries, been diminished by the use of immature stalks for 
cuttings and by careless cultivation. To what extent the beet 
has been improved can be gathered from the fact that, during 
the last twenty-five years, its sweetness has been practically 
doubled, and that nearly 20 per cent. of pure sugar in the picked 
beets is not unusual, this increase being obtained by extreme care 
in the cultivation and manuring, but principally by the special 
selection of sweet beets for seeding, thus following the same line 
as that pursued by Mr. Hallett when raising the celebrated 
pedigree wheat, which attracted so much notice a good many 
years ago. 
A good deal of attention is also paid by the chemists to the 
saving of what are usually called waste products. These play an 
inportant part in the manufacture of sugar from the cane. The 
crushed cane, after the obtainable sugar has been extracted, is 
used for firing the boilers, and thus furnishes a very large 
proportion of the fuel needed for working the factory ; and this, 
too, serves a second purpose, as the ashes from it contain a good 
deal of potash and other fertilising substances which are needed 
for application to the fields from which the cane has been taken. 
Then, again, at all our factories, the water driven off the juice of 
the cane while this is being boiled down is caught and used for 
watering the megass before it goes to the second mill and for 
other purposes ; and at our New South Wales mills, where fresh 
water cannot be obtained, it is fed into the boilers, which are 
thus both fed and fired with parts of the cane we buy. There is, 
however, one waste product for which yet but little use has been 
