Each cell bad a capacity of 75 cubic feet, and would hold 1,900 

 pounds of sorghum chips, moderately packed. Each cell]was constructed 

 from the drawings obtained from the Fives-Lille Company, and the de- 

 tailed description may be found in Bulletin No. 8. 



The cutters used were those employed at Ottawa last year. Thecon- 

 tractors made no attempt whatever to rebuild the forced feed attach- 

 ment, and this failure was the cause of the chief delay we experienced 

 after the apparatus was in regular use. With very sharp knives, and 

 with cane fresh and green, they did reasonably good work, but after a 

 frost had killed the leaves of the cane it was found almost impossible to 

 make the cutters work. It often required half an hour to fill a single 

 cell. When it is remembered that the rest of the apparatus could easily 

 have worked a ton of chips each eight minutes, the disastrous effects 

 of this delay can be appreciated. 



From this cause great trouble was experienced in working the bat- 

 tery. When all the cells were in use each one was often under pressure 

 three or four hours. The cane was unusually acid, and from this there 

 followed a large inversion of sucrose in the battery. If, to avoid this, 

 the temperature of diffusion was lowered, fermentation would set in. 

 There was nothing left for us to do but to work a smaller number of 

 cells. Often only six or seven cells were under pressure, and conse- 

 quently the degree of extraction was far less perfect than it would have 

 been otherwise. 



The style of cutter used furnished a chip well suited to diffusion, but 

 I am convinced that these cutters are more costly and require more 

 power for operation than is necessary. 



With a view of correcting these defects I purchased a beet root cutter, 

 formerly used by the Portland Beet Sugar Company, and had it rebuilt 

 by the Colwell Iron Company of New York, for an experimental cane 

 cutter. 



This apparatus had a horizontal disk, and was so modified as to take 

 a multiple feed, the cane being delivered to it through six hoppers in- 

 clined 40 degrees to the vertical. With perfectly clean canes this cutter 

 gave promise of success, but with the sorghum -cane as it came from the 

 field it proved a total failure. 



This leads me to believe that the cutters used at Java and other 

 places so successfully with sugar-cane would not serve the purpose of 

 slicing sorghum for the battery. Any question of cleaning the canes 

 before delivering them to^the cutter must be negatived on the score of 

 economy. 



For the further study of the problem I tried the system of cane-slicing 

 invented by Mr. H. A. Hughes, of Rio Grande, N. J. 



The principle of this system consists in first cutting the canes into 

 lengths of three or four inches by means of an ensilage-cutter, and after 

 passing them through a cleaning apparatus deliver them to a shaving- 

 machine constructed on the principle of a board -planer. 



