LETTER FROM MR. WRAY. 9AT 
the juice, as compared with maple sap. This is the true view, and 
reflects no discredit on the ability or judgment of those enterprising 
persons who have endeavored to add another to our resources of an 
agricultural kind. Some few persons have boldly asserted that they 
have obtained sugar from the sorghum of the northern states, and an 
impression has been fostered that some new process of manufacture 
would enable us to obtain a supply of sugar from this source. It isa 
part of the duty of men of science to point out what can be done, and 
thus direct attention to resources around us; it is no less a duty on 
their part to draw the broad line of distinction between what can and 
what cannot be accomplished. No dairy man or dairy woman would 
accept the proposition of converting at will butter into cheese, or 
cheese into butter; yet this may be done as easily as the glucose of 
the sorghum can be converted into sugar. 
While the variety of sorghum produced from the French seed in our 
northern states contains in its cells only glucose, which can be easily 
separated and exhibited with all its properties, we have before us a 
positive fact : those who suppose sugar to exist in the plant are sup- 
porting a negative, until they present us that product in a tangible 
form. 
16 Boylston Street, Boston, April, 1857. 
LETTER FROM MR. WRAY TO THE AUTHOR. 
Canapa, July 4th, 1857. 
Henry S. Oxcort, Esa. 
_My Dear Sir,—In reply to your inquiry, I beg leave te make the 
following remarks upon the statements put forth in Boston by Doctors 
Hayes and Bacon, relative to the character of the sugar contained in 
the Chinese Sorgho, which is now so generally denominated the 
Chinese Sugar Cane. 
That small quantities of crystallized sugar (identical in all po 
to that of the sugar cane, and not grape sugar) haye from time to 
time been produced in France, and even in this country (North 
America) is an established fact, admitting of no denial, and, as such, 
quite sufficient to prove that the Chinese Sorgho docs, under certain 
