18 SUGAR AND SUGAR PLANTS. 
inferior kind are common, and especially that which con- 
stitutes the sweet principle in most of our cultivated fruits, 
of which the sugar of the grape may be regarded as the 
type. This sugar has been produced in the solid form to 
a small extent directly from the inspissated juice of the 
grape in Syria, Egypt, and some parts of France. It is 
identical with the finely granulated coating found upon 
the surface of raisins, and with the mealy sediment grad- 
ually formed upon the bottom of vessels containing honey. 
Without alluding to the chemical properties and relations 
of this substance, which are more appropriately reserved 
for discussion in another part of this volume, it is enough 
to say that grape sugar is entirely different from true cane 
sugar, and can never be substituted for it in domestic use. 
It is soft, mealy, and liable to become damp and to fer- 
ment. It curdles milk, and is inappropriate for sweetening 
coffee and tea, and for most culinary purposes. In sac- 
charine richness it is far inferior to cane sugar, two pounds 
of the latter being equal in sweetening properties to five 
of the former. Of the same kind is the sugar artificially 
prepared from starch. It is manufactured from the starch 
of the potato in Europe; and recently an attempt was 
made in New York City to produce it from corn starch 
under the name of corn sugar. * 
The exorbitant prices now demanded for sugar, resulting 
chiefly from the partial failure of our Southern sugar crop 
during a period of several years prior to the recent rebel- 
lion, and the utter prostration of the business of production 
since, together with a vastly increased demand for sugars, 
is an evidence of our humiliating dependence upon foreign 
countries with which we formerly competed with success. 
* Corn sugar is the name appropriately given to sugar produced from 
the juice of maize or Indian-corn, and it is identical with cane sugar. The 
name as applied to starch sugar is liable to mislead. 
