210 QUALITIES OF SUGAR. 



stance of fruits in all countries, and at all seasons, 

 as affording a delicious seasoning to many kinds of 

 food ; but we are not so generally aware that it is 

 capable of yielding the most incongruous substances. 

 Yet such is the fact. It is both phosphoric and 

 combustible, emitting, when exposed to the action of 

 a slow fire, a blue flame, and a white one in propor- 

 tion to the degree of heat. It produces, by distil- 

 lation, a quantity of acid and oil, of gas and char- 

 coal. When subjected to the action of nitrous acid, 

 oxalic acid is readily produced ; and Lavoisier, who 

 paid much attention to the subject, assigned three 

 principles in sugar, hydrogen, oxygen, and carbon. 

 The expressed juice, if left to itself, passes into the 

 acetous fermentation, and yields, when decomposed, 

 after the lapse of two or three months, a consider- 

 able quantity of glutinous matter. This matter, 

 when distilled, gives a portion of ammonia, and if 

 the juice be exposed to the spirituous fermentation, 

 a wine is obtained analogous to cider. This also, 

 after being kept in bottles for some months, and 

 then distilled, yields a portion of brandy. 



Who that observed a field of sugar canes, lifting 

 up their graceful plumes of white feathers, and 

 waving their long narrow leaves, as if to welcome 

 the soft summer breeze, would conjecture that they 

 contained within them, laid up as in a store-house, 

 such heterogeneous materials, each of which are 

 only waiting to be called forth by the skill of man, 

 that oil and acid, a gas, and charcoal, ammonia, 

 and wine, are all contained in this jointed reed; 

 sugar also, that pleasant substance to which we are 

 indebted for many valuable and important results; 



