SUGAR. 425 



tops should be laid in small piles to dry. The seed should be shelled and used as food for 

 stock. It may be threshed like wheat, or treated the same as broom-corn seed. Sheep will 

 eat it on the heads without shelling, but for other stock it is best when shelled and ground. 

 The sorgo-plant ratoons or tillers the same as the tropical cane, and at the South will thus 

 produce two crops in a year, but at the North only one crop will have time during the season 

 to mature. 



Manufacturing Syrup and Sugar from Sorghum. In preparing the cane for 

 the mill, the stalks are tied into bundles about eight inches in diameter. When not intended 

 for immediate use, the bundles should be piled across each other in such a manner as to 

 admit a free circulation of air, being placed where they will be kept perfectly clean. It is 

 best, however, as previously stated, to grind it at once, if practicable, as soon as harvested. 

 Where the leaves are left on the stalks in grinding, there will be a greater waste of juice, 

 since they will absorb it more than would be at first supposed. In grinding, the mill should 

 be fed by the butt end of the cane entering first. The largest portion of the sorgo product 

 in this country is converted into syrup, but sugar is made to a certain extent, more being 

 made at present than formerly. 



The different processes of manufacturing syrup from sorgo, consisting of the expressing 

 of the juice, the defecation or cleansing it from impurities, and the concentration, are essen 

 tially the same as those already given in the manufacture of sugar from the tropical sugar 

 cane; the processes for syrup being complete before the period of crystallization is reached. 



Sugar may also be manufactured from sorgo, the same as from the tropical cane. The 

 principal difficulty attending this process has been in the crystallization. In order to better 

 secure granulation or crystallization, the chemical division of the Department of Agriculture, 

 after numerous experiments, recommended the following special treatment: 



&quot; Sorghum syrups should be reduced to a density that, after a lapse of from twenty-four 

 to forty-eight hours, when kept in a warm room, it will become an almost solid mass of sugar. 

 It requires then a special mode of treatment, the crystals being fine and held together by only 

 a small quantity of molasses. When in this condition, the mass is to be thrown into a large 

 tub or mixing-vessel, and a small quantity (about one-tenth of its volume) of a fair, thin 

 syrup, prepared from sorghum -juice of a density of about 30 Baum6; when cold, it is to be 

 poured upon it and thoroughly incorporated in it by means of a wooden stirrer. 



An iron mixing-mill constructed somewhat like the feed-hopper of a centrifugal sugar- 

 drainer, with a revolving shaft in its center, set with long projecting teeth, may be employed 

 in regular work. This will bring it to the semi-fluid state, if the room in which the opera 

 tion has been performed has been kept heated. The syrup dilutes the uncrystallized sugar 

 sufficiently to render it mobile, and does not dissolve the cane-sugar. The mass may then be 

 drained in a centrifugal, the inner drum of which is very clearly but minutely perforated, 

 and running at the highest rate of speed. 



Another method which may be followed is similar to that employed in some sugar 

 factories to extract the juice from the pulp of the beet and also to separate the saccharine 

 matter left in the scum. 



A number of linen and coarse muslin sacks are provided, of any convenient size, but 

 their length should be about two and one-half times their width, say twenty by fifty inches ; 

 each sack is to be about one-third filled with this sugary mixture, folded once on itself in the 

 , middle, and flattened by placing it upon a table upon a sheet-iron plate with rounded corners, 

 a little larger on every side than the partially-flattened half of the sack and its contents, the 

 loose half being folded under. The open end of the sack may be folded twice, if necessary. 

 The plate and sack are then to be placed within a frame on the bed of a powerful screw- 

 press, and a series of such sacks and interleaved plates laid neatly one upon another, being 

 turned irt opposite directions, and subjected to pressure, gradually applied at first, to avoid 

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