344 



NATURE 



[July 4, 19 18 



condition imposed, in paragraph (14), which I quote, 

 deserves ci wider publicity. 



•■(14) It should be noted that grants to research 

 workers will be subject to the following conditions 

 [aittong others] :— 



"The results of the investigation as obtained from 

 time to tirhe shall, in the first place, be communicated 

 to the Committee of Council, who, after consultation 

 with the bodies and persons who have co-operated in 

 the conduct and maintenance of the research, shall 

 determine in the national interest whether, and if so 

 to what extent and under what conditions, the results 

 shall be niade available. 



"The Committee of Council reserve the right to 

 determine, after consultation with the bodies and 

 persons who have co-operated in the conduct and main- 

 tenance of. the research, whether, and if so to what 

 extent and in what proportions, the Committee of 

 Council and those bodies and persons shall secure 

 to themselves by patent, designs or otherwise, the 

 ownership of the results of the research and any 

 benefits and profits arising therefrom. 



I" It is not expected that results of direct technical 

 value will often be obtained from research undertaken 

 by a student in training, and the conditions stated 

 above are not, therefore, attached to a grant to a 

 student. But the professor and student will be asked, 

 should results apparentlv of commercial value be pro- 

 duced, to consult the Department before taking any 

 action to make the results public, or to communicate 

 them to an industrial firm or other body for exploita- 

 tion." 



I sincerely trust that scientific investigators, whether 

 professors or students, will read, mark, and inwardly 

 digest paragraph (14), and think twice before they 

 accept any grant from the Department of Scientific and 

 Industrial Research. They have the right to know who 

 is responsible for the imposition of this condition. 



Frederick Soddv. 



THE SUGAR INDUSTRY AFTER 

 THE WAR. 



UXDER the alx>ve title, Mr. T. H. P. Heriot, 

 the lecturer on sugar manufacture at the 

 Royal Technical College, Glasgow, has communi- 

 cated a paper to the Royal Philosophical Society 

 of Glasgow which has recently been published in 

 its Proceedings. Since its appearance the . sub- 

 ject has occupied the attention of the ^oyal 

 Society of Arts, and the issue of the journal of the 

 society for June 14 contains an interesting paper 

 by Mr. George Martineau, which traverses much 

 the same ground as that of Mr. Heriot and arrives 

 independently at the same conclusions. The 

 subject is so important at the present juncture, 

 and our position with respect to it, in view of our 

 prospective relations with our enemies, so serious, 

 that no excuse is needed for referring to it. The 

 general course of the development of the sugar 

 industry is too well known to require any detailed 

 description. Both authors deal with it in the 

 introduction to their papers at just sufficient 

 length to render the nsrture of their arguments 

 and the conclusions to which they arrive intelli- 

 gible and obvious to their readers. 



Originally, all the sugar consumed in this country, 

 and in Europe generally, was made from the sugar- 

 cane, and most of it was imported from the West 

 Indies. It was known, however, so far back as 

 NO. 2540, VOL. lOl] 



the middle of the eighteenth century, that the 

 particular kind of sugar — sucrose — ^with which we 

 are now concerned existed in other plants thaa 

 the sugar-cane. In 1747 the chemist Marggraf 

 pointed out that it was present in the beetroot,, 

 then being cultivated on an extensive scale in 

 Silesia as a forage crop, and his pupil, Achard, a 

 Frenchman who had settled in Germany, grew the 

 root on his estate, and set up a small manufactory 

 for extracting sugar from it. The success of this 

 enterprise induced King Frederick William of 

 Prussia, in 1801, to supply funds for the creation 

 of beetroot-sugar factories. The industry may be 

 said, therefore, to take its rise from the begin- 

 ning of the nineteenth century. 



The Continental disturbances of that time, com- 



I bined with our maritime supremacy and the effec- 

 tiveness of our blockade, especially of the. 



! F'rench ports, gave a great impetus to the develop- 



; ment of beetroot-sugar manufacture. Napo- 

 leon, with characteristic sagacity, quickly saw in 

 the beetroot a method of countering our blockade,, 

 at least so far as regarded the import of sugar. 

 By his orders tens of thousands of acres of French 

 soil were planted with beetroot, and schools of 

 instruction in the art of cultivating it and in the 

 methods of sugar-making were founded by his 

 direction. Before Waterloo ended his career the 

 beetroot-sugar industry of the Continent had been; 

 firmly established both in France and in Germany,, 

 and to that extent the future welfare of our West 



* Indian possessions was, as Napoleon clearly fore- 

 saw, seriously jeopardised. 



The creation of the beetroot-sugar industry was 



j due entirely, in the first instance, to the exertion.** 

 of men of science who had no practical acquaint- 

 ance with the art of sugar manufacture. Its 

 development has been largely owing to their 

 lalx>urs. They have studied the mode of growth of 

 the root and the conditions under which the sugar 

 is secreted, and they have thereby succeeded in 

 greatly increasing the sugar content. By careful 

 and intelligent investigation they have enormously 

 improved the methods of sugar extraction and 

 subsequent treatment. They have brought chemi- 

 cal knowledge and skill to bear on the improvement 



I of the analysis of saccharine materials and on the 



! elucidation of many problems of a chemical nature 

 connected with the industry. There is probably no 

 branch of technology that could be named in which 

 science has been more successfully applied than in 

 the creation and development of the beetroot-sugar 



j industry. On the other hand, science, in times 

 past, had little to do with the sugar-cane industry, 

 and so long as the West Indian planters could 

 count upon the enormous profits that they formerly 



i enjoyed, they had little or no inducement to think 



; of science in connection with it. 



; But it would be untrue to allege that the planters 

 of these latter days have been wholly oblivious to 

 the bearing of science upon their industry. They 

 could not be altogether unmindful of what it 

 had done for their rivals, nor without hope that 

 it might be serviceable in their own case, and, !• 

 as a matter of fact, various attempts- 



