A CHAT ABOUT BEET-SUGAR 



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Bugar-production has been limited to refining, England 

 and Scotland both having won renown as being among 

 the leading refiners of the world's sugar-supply. 



The birth and growth of the beet-sugar industry 

 make very modern history in comparison with the 

 career of cane-sugar. Native Chinese and Indians 

 were sucking the juice out of bits of sugar-cane in the 

 very long-ago days ; and as early as the sixth century 

 both India and China were turning cane-juice into 

 sugar, India having made such progress with the in- 

 dustry that she was then carrying on an export trade 

 with Europe in a white variety. 



But it was not until the middle of the eighteenth cen- 

 tury that beetroot-juice was found to be particularly 

 rich in sugar-germs. The discovery was made by a 

 German chemist, and it was one of his compatriots 

 who, towards the close of the century, invented the 

 first practical method of extracting beet-juice. In 

 view of the very old example set by the cane-sugar 

 industry, it is not surprising that this invention em- 

 bodied a crushing process ; the roots were reduced to 

 pulp by a machine, and the pulp was wrapped in cloths 

 and carried on trays to be squeezed in hydraulic presses. 

 The simpler and more economical diffusion process 

 of extraction was not adopted till 1860 ; the pioneer 

 of this new method was an Austrian sugar-manu- 

 facturer, who laid the whole beet-sugar industry under 

 an inestimable debt to his genius and enterprise. 



To go back to the infancy of this industry : remember, 

 they were two Germans who first discovered that sugar 

 could be made from beet- juice, and that there was a 

 way of making it which gave promise of creating a 

 profitable new industry. To the credit of Germany, 



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