48 SUGAR 



dispenses with the elaborate clarifying and filtering 

 operations. 



The following analysis of the beetroot is given in 

 Horsin-Deon's book of 1894, " Le Sucre et 1'industrie 

 Sucriere." Water 80 per cent., sugar 15, cellulose and 

 woody fibre 1, gummy matters 0'6, albumen and other 

 nitrogenous substances 1-6, other organic substances 1, 

 mineral matters 0'8 per cent. Since then the average 

 percentage of sugar has risen in many countries 2 per 

 cent. Even the sugar actually extracted has risen 

 in some favoured districts to more than 16 per cent, 

 in a good season. This beats cane sugar hollow. But 

 then the beetroot farmers only produce on the average, 

 in the most favoured countries, 10 to 14 tons of roots 

 to the acre, whereas the sugar cane is produced at the 

 rate of twenty to forty tons to the acre. The sugar 

 cane in Java, that most successful sugar-producing 

 country, cannot be said to contain, on the average, 

 more than 12 to 15 per cent, of sugar, and the quantity 

 actually extracted does not, on the average, exceed 

 10J to lOf per cent. But, as has been already stated, 

 they produce in Java, on the average, more than four 

 tons of high-class sugar to the acre. The average 

 production of European beetroot sugar is well under 

 two tons to the acre. 



There is one peculiarity of the beetroot juice which is 

 of great importance : it contains no uncrystallizable 

 sugar. Good raw beetroot sugar, therefore, is entirely 

 free from what is roughly called glucose. The juice, 

 moreover, is not acid and, therefore, does not become 

 inverted so rapidly as cane juice. Here beet has a great 

 advantage over cane. But in some of our sugar colonies, 

 Jamaica and Demerara for instance, the final product, 

 molasses, which of course contains, among other 

 things, the invert sugar existing in the cane and largely 



