WAX. 141 



these fruits may be reduced to a sirup supplying for many 

 purposes the [^ace of^ugar, and of great use as an article 

 of food. By concentrating these nutritive substances, the 

 advantage of reducing them to a small bulk is added to 

 that of preserving them from decomposition: the same 

 effects are produced by concentrating them to a jelly or 

 an extract. Those sweet juices, that are not convertible 

 into sirups, will, by being fermented, form a vinous liquor, 

 equally useful, healthful, and agreeable, to a great portion 

 of the people. 



Those substances, which are, by the aid of chymistry, 

 convertible into sugar, furnish only the second kind of it ; 

 this is very suitable for being made by fermentation to 

 produce alcohol. 



The specific gravity of sugar is, according to Fahren- 

 heit, 1.6 ; it dissolves in its own weight of water, at the 

 temperature of 50°. Sugar contains 42.47 per cent, of 

 carbon ; hydrogen and oxygen are found in it as in the 

 gums, in the same proportions as in water. 



ARTICLE IV. 

 Wax. 



Though wax can be extracted in considerable quanti- 

 ties only from the berries of the myrica ccrifera^ yet it is 

 contained in nearly all p'ants ; it exists in greater or less 

 quantities in the leaves o most trees. Wax is also formed 

 by the decomposition ot several roots; for if, when the 

 first operations are performed for extracting sugar from 

 the juice of beets, they be not well conducted, from the 

 moment the boiling of tne concentrated sirup, in order to 

 form the sugar, is commenced, there collects upon the 

 surface a thick, whitish, glutinous substance, which, when 

 removed with the skimmer and dried, exhibits all the 

 characteristics of wax ; it is insoluble either in water or 

 alcohol ; it burns like wax, and has the same consistency ; 

 nor does it in any other respect differ from it. It is this 

 substance that adheres to the sides of the boilers when 

 ♦he sirups have become thickened by boiiiu^, beyond 35° 

 of the aerometer of Baurae. The burning of the liquor, 



