58 SUGAR 



the lime attacks and decomposes some of the glucose. 

 In the beginning the beetroot factories followed the 

 example of their brethren in caneland; they added 

 lime, the scum at the top was removed, the heavier 

 impurities sank to the bottom, and the intervening 

 clear juice was drawn off. That was simple clarification. 

 The juice was then boiled in open pans, and allowed 

 to crystallize as it cooled ; the result was a very excellent 

 raw sugar which can still be recollected and praised 

 by those who go back to the sixties. Very little of the 

 raw beetroot sugar is as good as it was then. It is a 

 curious fact that the modern agent, sulphurous acid, 

 was tried with beetroot sugar more than a hundred 

 years ago ; but science was not sufficiently advanced in 

 those days to make it a safe experiment. They even 

 tried sulphuric acid as a means of "throwing down the 

 excess of lime, and with some success. This method 

 was practised more or less up to 1849, when the idea of 

 using carbonic acid gas made its practical appearance. 

 It was called the Rousseau process. The juice, after 

 decantation from the defecating pan, was saturated 

 with the gas until the whole of the excess of lime was 

 thrown down in the form of insoluble carbonate. Ten 

 years later Perier and Possoz introduced double carbon- 

 atation, which is now the universal system. The name 

 of Jelinek is attached to this system in Austria. New 

 industrial methods and new scientific ideas have a habit 

 of springing up simultaneously in various quarters. 



Among the gummy impurities is included pectine, 

 which, if the raw juice were left to itself, would rapidly 

 decompose into gelatinous substances converting the 

 whole mass into a sort of jelly. Other fermentations 

 would follow and attack the sugar itself. Lime throws 

 down this pectine as well as the organic acids, and 

 coagulates the albumen in a hot juice. But in a hot 



