QQ, nutritive plants. 



The sap of the agave Americana, 



, fucus saccharinus, 



ficus carica, 



The juice of arundo saccharifera, 



zea mays, 



The roots of pastinaca sativa, 



sium sisarum, 



beta vulgaris and cicla, 



- daucus carota, 



apium petroselinum. 



Parmentier has also ascertained that the grains of wheat, barley, 

 &c. and all the other similar seeds which are used as food, contain 

 at first a large quantity of sugar, which gradually disappears as they 

 approach to a state of maturity. This is the case also with peas 

 and beans, and all leguminous seeds : and is one reason why the 

 flavour of young peas is so much superior to that of old ones. 



Wheat Sugar. 



The difficulty of procuring West-Indian sugar on the continent 

 while the whole of its coast was blockaded by the British marine, 

 and the whole of the West India islands were in the possession of 

 the British government, proved a strong stimulus to urge the spirit 

 of chemistry to exert itself to the utmost in examining the quantity 

 of saccharine matter contained in indigenous plants, with a view of 

 determining the practicability of working sugar from them, as also 

 the possibility of obtaining this material by agents purely chemical. 

 Hence, as we have already seen, the buds, the pulps, the stems, 

 and the roots of different plants were all tried in succession, 

 but ultimately to little effect. For although a certain proportion of 

 saccharine matter has been obtainable from most of these organs, 

 and especially from the beet-root, it does not appear to have been 

 in any instance sufficient to repay the expense of the labour. At 

 length, M. Kirchoff of St. Petersburg succeeded in converting a 

 considerable proportion of the starch of wheat into a saccharine mat- 

 ter, and ultimately into a liquid sugar ; and the hint having been 

 thrown out, it has been since followed up in France, with no incon- 

 siderable degree of success. The history of this very recent expe- 

 riment is highly curious as an article of chemistry, and we readily 

 present our readers with the following account of it in the Annales 



