142 CHYMISTRY APPLIED TO AGRICULTURE. 



which prevents the ebullition from being carried to a 

 sufficient extent to produce a good crystallization of the 

 sugar, is caused by this substance. There cannot be too 

 much care taken in the first operations to prevent this 

 deterioration of the sirup, as this alone has occasioned 

 the failure of most of the establishments, which were 

 formed in France in 1810, for manufacturing sugar from 

 beets. 



Nearly all the wax which is used in the arts, and for 

 domestic purposes, is produced by bees, the cells of their 

 hives being formed by it. This wax is found in scales or 

 plates under the abdomen of the insect, and appears to be 

 a transudation, which becomes thickened, and which the 

 bee detaches by rubbing, to form his cells. 



Wax is bleached by pouring it when melted upon a 

 cylinder partly immersed in water, and to which a rapid 

 rotatory motion is given. The wax, as it flows over the 

 moistened surface of the cylinder, congeals in very thin 

 layers, which are afterwards exposed upon cloths in the 

 sun for some time, that they may acquire a clear white- 

 ness. 



It does not appear, that in the elaboration of wax, the 

 bee bestows upon it any animal character whatever ; the 

 wax which is furnished by bees is precisely of the same 

 nature as that procured directly from some vegetables. 

 Wasps build cells, which they use for the same purposes 

 as the bees do theirs ; but the materials of which they are 

 constructed is ligneous, and consists of minute portions of 

 the fibrous part of vegetables cemented by an animal ghit?.a. 

 According to the analysis of Messrs. Gay-Lussac and The- 

 nard, 100 parts of wax are composed of 



Carbon 81.784 



Oxygen 5.544 



Hydrogen 12.672 



The property possessed by wax, of burning without pro- 

 ducing either odor or smoke, has caused it to be generally 

 used for lighting the apartments of the wealthy : tallow 

 and the common oils have always been used by the poor, 

 and they are so even at this day, when science and chymis- 

 try have united to perfect the mode of lighting by oil. 



