PREFACE, 
Recent improvements in the art of making sugar and syrup 
from Sorghum Cane have created a necessity for the publication 
of this volume. Itis written for the benefit chiefly of Farmers and 
Planters of the United States, who have fostered this new branch 
of industry from the outset, and in whose hands it is destined to 
assume a new importance. The time is past when fhis pursuit 
is to be regarded only as an experiment, or as an ephemeral 
enterprise, persisted in merely because of the paralyzation of 
industry at the South. 
Sugar making is an Art, and complete success is not attain- 
able at a bound, but the attentive reader of these pages will find 
that it is an art easily learned. The pathway, by which I reached 
my cbject in these researches, was beset with obstructions which 
it was necessary to overcome successively as they presented 
themselves—-wherein much time was spent, but not unprofitably, 
as the result, I trust, will show. Of the magnitude of these 
difficulties few have any just apprehension, who have not, in a 
thorough manner, addressed themselves to the task of discover- 
ing what is their real nature. 
One fact, however, rewards the investigation at the start, and 
was to me a sufficient encouragement; namely, that the best 
varieties of this cane contain as large a proportion of crystalliz- 
able sugar as does ordinarily the sugar canein Lowistana. This 
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