2G2 BEETROOT SUGAR IN FRANCE. 



however, established near Paris : they failed, for reasons easy 

 to understand. 



Farther essays would probably have been made, had not 

 the national attention been diverted to the contemplation of a 

 rival scheme of sugar manufacture suggested by Parmentier. 

 It was believed by this chemist that sugar might be more 

 economically extracted from grapes than from beet ; whereas 

 the fact is, that grapes, however sweet, hold no sugar in the 

 sense of commercial crystallisable loaf-making sugar at all. 

 Crystalline sugar Parmentier did not succeed in getting out 

 of grapes, for the simple reason that they do not contain any. 

 He established factories, however, in the centre and south of 

 France, for the production of syrup, owing its sweetness to 

 a variety of sugar different from cane sugar, and known to 

 chemists as glucose, or grape sugar. The very same kind of 

 syrup results from the boiling of starchy matter, or even saw- 

 dust, with oil of vitriol and water. Large quantities of this 

 syrup are at this time made in Germany from potato-starch. 

 The chief use of it when made is, I believe, to fabricate the 

 pernicious stuff sold as Hambro' sherry. 



The French public at length grew tired of looking for the 

 crystallised sugar promised them by Parmentier ; and when 

 intelligence came to hand that beetroot-sugar factories were 

 springing up in various parts of Germany, messieurs the 

 philosophers began to put to themselves the question whether 

 the scientific commission of inquiry might not have made 

 some trifling mistake. In 1810 another Frenchman, Monsieur 

 Deyeux, resumed the inquiry. He communicated a memoir 

 to the Academy of Sciences recording the results of some 

 newly-made experiments. He maintained that not only could 

 the manufacture be economically conducted, but that the 

 beetroot was the most natural and advantageous source for 

 the yielding of sugar identical with that of the cane. 



Having resolved that the attention of the French govern- 

 ment should be drawn to the matter, he presented two loaves 



