1817.) during the Year 1816. 51 
was worth while to preserve the recollection of the methods followed 
in preparing beet sugar, has published a long treatise on the subject, 
in which he describes all the details at length, and endeavours to 
prove that even in the present circumstances of France these manu- 
factories may in certain cases be persisted in with advantage. I 
shall endeavour in this place to lay a sketch of the process followed 
before my readers. 
The beets are deprived of their heads and tails, scraped with a 
knife, and then reduced to a pulp by akind of rasp driven by the 
hand. Good beet yields between 65 and 75 per cent. of its weight 
of juice. The juice is let into a large caldron, and heated to the 
temperature of between 104° and 122°. Then slacked quick-lime 
is thrown in to the amount of 21 grammes to the litre of juice. 
The heat is then raised till the juice is nearly boiling hot. ‘The fire 
is then extinguished. A crust forms upon the surface of the juice, 
which is carefully skimmed off. A stop-cock placed a foot above the 
bottom of the caldron is then opened, and the juice allowed to flow 
into another boiler. Lastly, a stop-cock at the bottom of the cal- 
dron is opened, and the juice at the bottom is allowed to pass 
through a filter, and mixed in the boiler with the remaining juice. 
In this new boiler the juice is made to boil. As soon as this takes 
place, a quantity of sulphuric acid previously diluted with 20 times 
its weight of water, and amounting to about one tenth of the lime 
previously used, is mixed with the liquid. It is better rather to 
allow a slight excess of lime to remain in the liquid than to have 
any excess of sulphuric acid. Three per cent. of animal charcoal 
is likewise added in the state of an impalpable powder. ‘The liquid 
is then drawn off clear into a smaller and deeper boiler, where the 
boiling is continued till the whole is sufficiently concentrated to 
allow the sugar to granulate. The raw sugar thus formed is refined 
in the usual way. (See Ann. de Chim. xcv. 253.) 
The sugar thus formed has exactly the appearance and the che- 
mical properties of sugar from the sugar-cane. It has likewise the 
same figure of crystals. Hence there can be no doubt that it is the 
very same substance. 
2. Albumen and Gluten compared.—tin Schweigger’s Journal, 
xiv. 294, there is a paper by Mr. H.F. Link, in which he compares 
the chemical properties of animal allumen and the gluten of wheat. 
I have inserted a translation of this paper in the Annals, vii. 455, 
to which I refer the reader. It will be seen by a perusal of that 
paper that the two substances have a very close resemblance to each 
other, supposing always that the albumen has been previously 
coagulated by heat. 
3. Method of separating Gluten from Starch.—Kirchhoff, to 
whom we are indebted for the discovery of the method of convert- 
ing starch into sugar, observed that the process did not succeed so 
well with starch from grain as with potatoe starch. ‘Chis he consi- 
dered as owing to the presence of gluten, with which starch from 
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