32 PHILIPPINE AGRICULTURAL REVIEW. 



carbonic, nitric, and organic acids. These have the power to act 

 upon the mineral constituents and thus liberate other plant- 

 food elements. The filter-press mud can very well be mixed 

 with the bagasse ashes, and scattered about the cane rows as 

 an almost complete fertilizer for sugar cane, the only element 

 lacking being nitrogen, which was lost in the burning of the 

 bagasse. 



It will be remembered that in the synthesis of sucrose, which 

 consists of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, there are none of 

 the plant-food elements used which are sought for in commercial 

 fertilizers. These are used only in building the fibrous stalk 

 of the cane and they may all be recovered in the bagasse and 

 cane-juice impurities. The carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen which 

 are used practically all come from the air and water. 



It is a custom to-day to cart this ash to piles or depressions 

 some distance from the factory. In some places it is thrown 

 into the river, or cast into the sea an absolute loss. 



Planters must not depend upon commercial fertilizers for 

 their supply of plant-food material, when there is such an abund- 

 ance of natural fertilizer being wasted. The cost of the ar- 

 tificial fertilizers in many cases is considered prohibitive and 

 often unnecessary. In order to build up a great sugar industry 

 here, the material at hand must be used, while money should 

 be spent for modern apparatus and equipment. 



MOLASSES. 



The dark-colored viscous substance remaining after the large 

 crystals of sucrose have been removed is called molasses. This 

 contains small crystals of sucrose, which has passed through 

 the perforations of the centrifugal screens, sucrose in solution, 

 glucose, fructose, and other organic substances, such as pectin 

 bodies, albumenoids, coloring substances, etc., besides the in- 

 organic matter constituting the ash upon incineration of the 

 molasses. 



The composition of the molasses varies with the working of 

 each factory, also with the condition of cane, time of harvest, 

 etc. The juice from green cane and that which has reached 

 ultramaturity will contain a higher percentage of invert sugar 

 and organic non-sugars than a properly matured cane. Then 

 factories that have ample boiling-house provision, and crystal- 

 lizers as well as magma tanks, will be able to send out a molasses 

 with lower purity, thus recovering more of the crystallizable 

 sugar. 



