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The World's Commercial Products 



CARRYING CANES TO THE FACTORY IN MEXICO 



solid sugar has been obtained, is an important subsidiary product in the cane-sugar industry, 

 and the maple syrup of North America is a delicacy esteemed in countries beyond that 

 in which it is produced. More recently new articles — molascuit and molassine meal — have 

 been added to the list of commercial products of the sugar plants, and altogether this group 

 of plants must be accounted amongst those of the greatest importance to man. 



Sugar is very generally distributed in the vegetable world, and almost all plants contain 

 sugar at some stage of their life history. It would be out of, place here to enter into a full 

 discussion of the chemical changes which go on in that wonderful laboratory, the green leaf 

 of a plant, but it may be said that in general a sugar is one of the first substances manufactured 

 by the plant from the simple materials, water and the carbonic acid gas, of the atmosphere. 



The sugar is essential to the life and growth of the plant, and as it can only be formed 

 when the weather is warm enough and in the presence of sunlight, plants manufacture more 

 than they want for their immediate requirements, and literally put the remainder by " for a 

 rainy day." This reserve of food is not always stored away as sugar, but is frequently converted 

 first into starch, and then changed back again to sugar as it is wanted. Plants which store 

 their carbohydrate reserves- in the form of starch are the useful cereals, the potato and other 

 starch yielders, already discussed. Some plants, however, actually keep their reserves of 

 food as sugar, and it is with this group that we are immediately concerned. The large roots 

 of the carrot, the parsnip and the beet all contain sugar, accumulated during the first 

 year of the plant's growth, to be drawn upon in the second, when, in the ordinary course 

 of nature, the plants would flower. Although all three are possible sugar-producers, only one, 

 the beet, is made use of by man. The beet is pre-eminently the sugar-yielding plant of the 

 temperate regions, and its cultivation for this purpose is, comparatively speaking, quite a 

 modern enterprise, as we shall describe in detail later. On the other hand, in the tropics 

 there has been grown, from time immemorial, as a source of sugar the famous sugar-cane — • 

 a gigantic grass — the thick stems of which contain large quantities of juice rich in sugar. 

 There are also in the tropics various palms, for example, the date, the Palmyra palm, the 

 coco-nut palm, the sugar palm (Arenga), and others, from all of which a sweet juice is obtained 



