260 BEETROOT SUGAR IN FRANCE. 



reason sugar, being a bulky article, was difficult to obtain. 

 Out of the pressure thus caused, the practical manufacture 

 of beetroot sugar in France originated, though it was not 

 brought to remunerative point until some years later. 



Everybody who has eaten a slice of red beetroot, even 

 though saturated with vinegar in a salad, must have remarked 

 that it is sweet. White beets are not used in salad-making, 

 being unattractive to the eye; but they are even sweeter 

 than the red. Now, the existence of sweetness does not of 

 itself prove the existence of sugar, as the public understand 

 sugar ; by which I mean crystallisable sugar, such as can be 

 manufactured into loaves. In the case of beetroot, however, 

 the sweetness is due to the very same chemical species of 

 sugar extractable from the cane. To determine the presence 

 of sugar in beetroot is no difficult matter; to get out the sugar 

 economically and in commercial quantities is, if not a diffi- 

 cult, a very delicate matter. Having minutely examined some 

 of the chief beetroot-sugar factories of France and Belgium, 

 I can testify that the ingenuity of the apparatus used, the 

 delicacy of the operations, and the philosophical application 

 of principles to ends, are beyond what the public imagine. 

 This is hardly a proper field, however, for enlarging on such 

 topics. 



A Prussian chemist, Margraff, was the first to demonstrate 

 the existence of crystallisable commercial sugar in wiiite Sile- 

 sian beet. So long ago as 1747 he read a memoir before the 

 Academy of Berlin, making this announcement. Although 

 Margraff called attention to the importance of the discovery, 

 no practical application was given to it for more than forty 

 years. Achard, another Berlin chemist, took up the thread 

 of experiment at the point where Margraff had dropped it. 

 To him we owe the first practicable, though still very im- 

 perfect, means of extracting sugar from beetroot on the 

 commercial scale. 



The Prussian government extended to Achard a patron- 



