M. VILMORIN’S RESEARCHES. 315 
that the juice of the sorgho owes the readiness with which it ferments, 
and the large product in alcohol which it gives, compared to the 
amount of sugar observed directly in the saccharometer. 
Considered in relation to the manufacture of sugar, the sorgho seems 
to me to have small chance of success in the northern and central por- 
tions of France—that is to say, in the tracts of country where the cul- 
ture of the beet is entirely successful. The strong proportion of un- 
crystallizable sugar which it contains, is not merely so much loss in 
this manufacture, but it becomes an impediment to the extraction of 
the other sugar. It is not, however, because the products of the sorgho 
are poor or difficult to be obtained, but simply that their nature ren- 
ders them, under similar circumstances, more prolific in alcohol than 
sugar; and if, in the present state of the market, it is profitable to 
distil the beet root, which, by the most skillful processes, does not 
afford an amount of alcohol correspondent to the proportion of sugar 
which may be extracted, how much more potent reasons are there in 
favor of the sorgho, whose juice yields more than the equivalent of its 
extractable sugar. 
It will be the same if we consider the sorgho in those warmer regions 
where the beet cannot grow in competition with it. Some experiments 
made with the stalks of sorghos cultivated in Algeria, sent to me by 
M. Peschard of Ambly, Mayor of Phillipeville, produced sugar decidedly 
superior in quality to that yielded by my plants raised in the environs 
of Paris. The long time occupied in the transmission of the package, 
caused a partial change to occur, which prevented my determining 
with accuracy the comparative values of the two kinds of sugar in 
the sorgho of Algeria ; but the nature of the sap, as well as the obser- 
vations communicated to me by Mr. Wray—formerly a planter in 
Natal, Caffraria—lead me to think that the proportion of crystalliz- 
able sugar will at once become greater where the climate permits the 
sorgho to attain a complete maturity. This plant, therefore, will fill, 
in the production of sugar, the void existing between the tropical 
regions—alone suitable for the cultivation of the sugar cane—and the 
fourty-fourth parallel, which seems to be the southern boundary to the 
profitable cultivation of the beet root. Beyond this limit, the latter 
