WATERMELON SUGAR. 



Sugar from "Watermelons. 



SOME few French and German writers many years 

 ago expressed their opinion that the melon 

 would be a capital plant for sugar manufacture. 

 Factories are said to have existed in Hungary 

 and Northern Italy, but we have not, during the 

 last ten years, seen any accounts of results there 

 obtained. With the view to home sugar manufacture, -a 

 factory was started, with a capital of $200,000, in Cali- 

 fornia, having for object the utilization of watermelons. 

 What success was there obtained we have never heard, 

 as the results were not published in the Government 

 Agricultural Reports. One of the arguments advanced 

 in favor of the melon utilization is, that with a small 

 capital the farmer, or a combination of a few farmers, 

 may make excellent brown sugar for domestic usage, 

 on a total capital of $r,OOO. If surplus sugar is pro- 

 duced, this could be sold to the refiner, who could 

 manufacture from it an excellent white and refined 

 sugar. These same theories have been advanced 

 for every plant that has been proposed for Northern 

 sugar for the past fifty years (and we have discussed 

 them under the head of Sorghum, etc.). And it is also 

 argued that working of melons into sugar may com- 

 mence a month earlier than with beets. But how can 

 this be, when the necessary temperature for their com- 

 plete maturity has not existed ? Whilst in New Jersey 

 the melon may be grown and ripened, apparently, 



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