6 SUGAR 



families are the prime givers of the millions of tons 

 of sugar which are yearly distributed North, South, 

 East, and West, yearly to be devoured in connection 

 with some food or drink by you and me, our friends 

 and our neighbours, and the vast majority of the in- 

 habitants of every quarter of the globe. 



Imagine that you are holding in one hand a piece 

 of sugar-cane, and in the other a sugar-beetroot : to 

 look at, the cane is very much like bamboo, with 

 which Japanese occasional tables have made you quite 

 familiar ; the beetroot, being white, reminds you more 

 of a parsnip, or of a freak turnip, than of its dark 

 crimson relative which you know so well. In appear- 

 ance, neither the cane nor the beet gives the slightest 

 suggestion of harbouring moist sugar, crystallized 

 sugar, lump sugar, or any other kind of sugar you have 

 ever seen. Of a truth, they do not contain any sort 

 of sugar in popular, solid form, but in their juice lurk 

 the germs of brown sugar, yellow sugar, or white sugar, 

 soft, granulated, or cube — in a word, of any variety 

 the manufacturer wills to call into being. 



Obviously, then, the first step in sugar-making is 

 to extract the juice from the canes and beet. 



For this purpose, the canes are crushed in a mill ; 

 the juice runs down through the rollers into a trough, 

 and the cane refuse, called " megass," is shot aside to 

 be used for fuel. 



The beetroots are shredded, and their juice is ex- 

 tracted by a process which is technically known as 

 " diffusion." In simplest explanation, this is what hap- 

 pens : Hot water is let into a closed vessel which contains 

 a mass of beetroot-shreds, and as a natural consequence 

 — discovered and turned to account by science and the 



