180 VALUE OF SORGHUM IN SUGAR PRODUCTION. 
Since then, occasional instances of successful crystalliza- 
tion have been recorded; but they stand out as isolated 
examples in the midst of many failures; the results have 
been far from uniform —success has been the exception 
rather than the rule—and they have been valuable only as 
showing the utter futility of the means ordinarily employed. 
Encouraged by the fact that sugar has been made from 
sorghum, many practical men have spent years in’ vainly 
striving ‘to learn the knack of it,” and failing, have 
abandoned it in despair, or catching at straws, have become 
the victims of the first ‘patent recipe” vender that came 
their way. 
The report of Dr. C. M. Wetherill, late Chemist in the 
National Department of Agriculture, is a valuable contribu- 
tion to our knowledge upon this subject, but it is unfortu- 
nate that the opportunities afforded him for making an 
analysis of the best varieties of the new cane were entirely 
inadequate. No analyses were made before the month of 
November, when most of the samples of cane, some of 
them transported several hundred miles, were, as is inti- 
mated, more or less injured. Some of the specimens were 
immature, others were undergoing fermentation, and hence 
the examination of them was necessarily hurried, and under 
ae 
“A RECOLLECTION. 
“Jn 1857 two men were at the same time laboring to develop the 
merits of the sorgo: one in a Philadelphia refinery with all the appli- 
ances capital could confer ; the other a backwoods chemist, with nothing 
but an old skillet and a cooking stove. The experiments of the former 
were very elaborate and expensive, but there they ended. The latter, 
ridiculed by his neighbors as a fool for thus wasting his time, sat pa- 
tiently over his skillet, studying into the nature of the juice as developed 
before him, and clutching every new idea, until after many failures in 
his efforts to embody the suggestions made by his study, he succeeded in 
bringing out that remarkable and justly celebrated boiler known as 
Cook’s Evaporator,” etc. 
