88 STORING THE CANE. 
is more pliable and can be packed more closely. The 
employment of such materials would be highly objection- 
able in structures close to the evaporating-room or any 
parts of the building in which fires are used, but no un- 
usual risk would be incurred if the cane sheds occupy the 
proper position, the extremity of the range of buildings 
farthest removed from the evaporating-room and sugar- 
house. 
In such buildings Chinese cane, if not injured by frost 
previously to being cut, will keep perfectly uninjured until 
January if necessary. The canes having been previously 
topped and bladed may be either tied in bundles of forty 
or fifty stalks together and set in on the butt ends closely 
under shelter, or they may be laid horizontally in compact 
piles, and in either case, if screened from the sun and rain, 
the density of the juice and the bulkiness of the stored 
mass of canes will preserve them almost unaffected by the 
sudden fluctuations of temperature common in early winter, 
and even if they are frozen by protracted and severe cold 
they will thaw gradually in this condition without hurt. 
But the knowledge of this fact should not tempt any one 
to protract the working up of a crop beyond Christmas. 
The confirmed cold weather, which in the latitude of the 
Middle States usually sets in shortly after that time, sus- 
pends the work. Subsequent evaporation of the juice in the 
stalk and repeated freezing and thawing render it almost 
worthless before spring. Evaporation goes on as rapidly 
in frozen as in unfrozen cane, and is alone a source of great 
loss. Experiment proves that no mill is capable of ex- 
pressing all the juice contained in the stalk, and that when 
the juice has become dense by evaporation, a larger pro- 
portion of it, and consequently of the saccharine matter, is 
retained in the stalk than when it is more dilute. There 
is a loss then of sugar or syrup to the manufacturer from 
