934 SUGAR 



The black oxide of copper is not affected by being boiled in solution of starch- 

 sugar. 



'If a solution of grape-sugar,' says Trommer, 'and potash be treated with a solu- 

 tion of sulphate of copper, till the separated hydrate be re-dissolved, a precipitate of 

 red oxide will soon take place, at common temperatures, but it immediately forms if 

 the mixture is heated. A liquid containing ^o^oo . of grape-sugar, even one-millionth 

 part,' says he, ' gives a perceptible tinge (orange), if the light is let fall upon it.' To 

 obtain such an exact result, very great nicety must be used in the dose of alkali, 

 which is found extremely difficult to hit. With a regulated alkaline mixture, how- 

 ever, an exceedingly small portion of starch-sugar, is readily detected, even when 

 mixed with Muscovado sugar. 



Fehling has reduced this to a quantitative test, and makes a solution of copper that 

 will keep permanently. This is seen by the following : 



40 grammes of sulphate of copper, 

 160 grammes of neutral tartrate of potash, or 200 grammes of tartrate of soda, 



dissolved and added to 



700 800 cub. c. (grammes of caustic soda, specific gravity 1*12). 

 This is diluted with water to 1154'5 cub. c. 

 Of this solution 1 cub. c. = 0'0050 grape-sugar, or 



- 00475 cane-sugar. 



Grains may be used instead of grammes, and then 1 grain = 0'0050 grape-sugar, 

 without change of calculation. 



100 parts of grape-sugar . . . "] 



95 cane-sugar . I =220-5 CuO, or 198 Cu'O. 



90 starch . J 



Urine may be tested with this. It should be first diluted 10 to 20 times with water; 

 when the test is added, it should be boiled a few seconds, when the suboxide of copper 

 falls. Very constant results may be obtained. 



Horsley detects minute quantities of sugar by means of chromate of potash. 



Of the Sugar-cane, and the extraction of sugar from it, Though we have no direct 

 authority for believing that the sugar-ctrae was known to the ancients, we find scattered 

 through their writings notices of the occasional use of sweet substances different from 

 honey. 



The writers alluded to are these : Theophrastus, Dioscorides, Galen, Strabo, and 

 Pliny ; some of them speak distinctly of canes and reeds. Humboldt, after the most 

 elaborate historical and botanical researches in the New World, arrived at the 

 conclusion that before America was discovered by the Spaniards the inhabitants of 

 that continent and the adjacent islands were entirely unacquainted with the sugar- 

 canes, with any of our corn-plants, and with rice, The progressive diffusion of the 

 cane has been thus traced out by the partisans of its oriental origin. From the in- 

 terior of Asia it was transplanted first into Cyprus, and thence into Sicily, or possibly 

 by the Saracens directly into the latter island, in which a large quantity of sugar was 

 manufactured in the year 1148. Lafitau relates the donation made by William II., 

 King of Sicily, to the convent of St. Benoit, of a mill for crushing sugar-canes, along 

 with all its privileges, workmen, and dependencies : which remarkable gift bears the 

 date of 1166. According to this author, the sugar-cane must have been imported into 

 Europe at the period of the Crusades. The monk Albertus Aquensis, in the descrip- 

 tion which he has given of the processes employed at Acre and at Tripoli to extract 

 sugar, says that in the Holy Land the Christian soldiers, being short of provisions, 

 had recourse to sugar-canes, which they chewed for subsistence. Towards the year 

 1 420, Dom Henry, Kegent of Portugal, caused the sugar-cane to be imported into 

 Madeira from Sicily. This plant succeeded perfectly in Madeira and the Canaries ; and 

 until the discovery of America, these islands supplied Europe with the greater portion 

 of the sugar which it consumed. 



The cane is said by some to have passed from the Canaries into the Brazils ; but by 

 others, from the coast of Angola in Africa, where the Portuguese had a sugar colony. 

 It was transported, in 1506, from the Brazils and the Canaries, into Hispaniola or 

 Hayti, where several crushing-mills were constructed in a short time. It would ap- 

 pear, moreover, from the statement of Peter Martyr, in the third book of his first 

 Decade, written during the second expedition of Christopher Columbus, which happened 

 between 1493 and 1495, that even at this date the cultivation of the sugar-cane was 

 widely spread in St. Domingo. 



Sugar was first brought to England in. 1563, by Admiral Hawkins, and a century 

 later English planters were realising great wealth in Barbadoes. 



It has been supposed to have been introduced into Hayti by Columbus himself, on 

 his first voyage, along with other productions of Spain and the Canaries, and that there- 



