160 OTHER METHODS. 
iana, where it has been used lately to some extent on the 
plantations, is asserted to possess peculiar merits,—stated 
by its discoverer in the following words: Bisulphite of 
lime (the agent employed) acts— 
1. As a powerful antiseptic, preventing the production 
or formation of fermenting matter. 
9. As from its affinity for oxygen capable of preventing 
the changes which the presence of that agent causes in the 
juice. 
3. As an agent which at 100° Centigrade defecates the 
juice, and removes from it all the albumen and coagulated 
matter. 
4. As carrying away the pre-existing discoloration. 
5. As an agent capable in the highest degree of pre- 
venting the formation of coloring matters. 
6. As capable of neutralizing all the hurtful acids which 
exist or may be formed in the juice, substituting for them an 
acid almost inert (sulphurous acid).—(Lxtract from Mons. 
Melsen’s Memoir. ‘Translated by F. G. Clemsen, and 
published in the Agricultural Report of the Patent Office, 
1849-50, p. 404.) 
The value of bisulphite of lime in preventing fermenta- 
tion can scarcely be overestimated; and one great hope 
of the discoverer of this process, and that which led him 
to the selection of this agent was, ‘that in the equatorial 
regions at least, sugar might be extracted by the heat of 
the sun alone.” The antiseptic power of the bisulphite, 
preventing fermentation for an indefinite length of time, 
was thus most prominent in his view; its defecating prop- 
erties, although important, seem to have been in his view, 
as they are in reality, entirely subsidiary to that end. As 
a defecator of the juice of the tropical cane and the beet, 
its action is not complete, as asserted by himself, as, after 
the clarification, ‘there remains a matter which is colored 
