78 NUTRITIVE PLANTS. 



SECTION XI1T. 



Sugar. 



Sugar is produced, to a certain extent, by almost all vegetables, 

 and from different parts] of the plant, but chiefly the stem, root, 

 and flower ; and there are many of them in which the quantity 

 is sufficient to enable the grower to collect, concentrate, and 

 purify it for use. Of these the chief are the saccharum officina- 

 rum, or sugar-cane ; the acer saccharinum, or sugar-maple, and a 

 variety of beta, denominated the red beet-root. Besides these, the 

 inhabitants of New Spaiu procure sugar from the agave Americana, 

 and others from the asclepias syriaca, and zea mays, or Indian corn. 

 Nor are the inhabitants of high northern latitudes wholly destitute 

 of vegetables which furnish this useful article ^; for at Kamschatka 

 it is obtained from the heraleum syphondylium, and the fucus sac- 

 charinus. 



Sugar, when pure, is perfectly transparent ; and if crystallized, 

 colourless ; but when granular, of a pure glossy white, soluble in 

 water and alcohol, without smell, and with the taste of simple 

 sweetness, totally void of flavour. It melts by heat into a clear, 

 yellowish, tenacious liquid ; arid when kindled, burns witli a strong 

 flame, and a very pungent acid vapour. With the nitric acid it is 

 convertible chiefly into the oxalic acid. It is a most powerful anti- 

 septic, and is one of the most grateful and (when in mixture) one of 

 the most nutritive of all the alimentary substances derived from the 

 vegetable kingdom. Sugar is never found pure, and very rarely 

 in a state approaching to purity ; for it is always intimately com- 

 . bined with mucilage and other vegetable principles, to which it 

 largely imparts its peculiar taste. 



Cane Sugar, 

 Saccharum officinarum. Linn. 



The plant from which this useful material is commonly ob- 

 tained is the saccharum officinarum of Linnaeus. It is prepared 

 from ihe expressed juice boiled with the addition of quick-lime or 

 common vegetable alkali. It may be extracted also from a number 

 of plants, as the maple, birch, wheat corn, beet-root, skirret, pars- 

 nips, dried grapes, &c. by digesting in alcohol. The alcohol dis- 

 solves the sugar, and leaves the extractive matter untouched, which 



