2 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER 



JDIiT 13, 1S3C. 



parts. Seventyfoiir men anil women are em]);oy- 

 ed here every day, anil about ton less during ev- 

 ery niglit. The works eonsiinie the steam of 120 

 horse power, (rushing tons of Beets and evajio- 

 ralini; the jiiiee and crystallizing the sugar 

 complete in 24 hours. — From the washing of 

 the roots to the j.ouring off of the juice in- 

 to crystallizing |ians is only the work of 10 

 hours, the progress being seven, consisting of 



set of his own invention, for which he is about to 

 take a patent; he »vill be prepared to describe 

 them fully to me in a short time when I shall im- 

 mediately eommunie:ile to you the result. 



I find that the seed which 1 liave sent yon is of 

 ti.e true Sugar kind ; pray gel it a!l sown and re- 

 quest that it may bo kept quite clear, that we may 

 do ample justice to this oiu- first essay. The roots 

 grow large here upoo land of first quality, a fine 



asping, pressing, dcsicating, clarifying, and two deep red loam ; I shall be able to introduce a sys- 



evaporutings, in the most simple and perfect man 

 ner imaginable, all of which I shall be quite com- 

 petent to on niy return. — Kr has invented a 



most complete set of implements for the cultiva- 

 tion of a crop ; a drill that is perfect, to sow three 

 rows, or five if preferred, with hoes, &c., of the 

 most simple and effective kinds ; by these he is 

 enabled to cidtivate several thousands rf acres of 

 land in various parts of the country, his largest 

 farm l>eiug 4 miles distant from he4ice where I 

 liave seen his stock of oxen, slieep and milch 

 cows and farming horse.*, all fed on the cake and 

 refuse of the sugar house and cut chaff to vvon- 

 ilerful profit. — The cake which they are now 

 using is six months old, preserved in magazines of 

 which I have a plan, where it remains jierfectly 

 vinous to the smell. Mr Cat this and his other 

 works prej ared in 1S35 two millions and thirty 

 thousand pounds of Sugar, and expects next year 

 to make three millions ; the wh.ole expense of fab- 

 rication, including rent of [iremises, wear and tear 

 of machinery, interest of capital, &c. has been 

 4 4-7 sous per lb. This man ought to know his 

 business — he says he had made thousands of ex- 

 periments, has seen all, and tried many, of others, 

 and from these has adopted liis present plan as the 

 restdt. The Professor is so satisfied that he has 

 told me when I hear that iMr C. has adopted some 

 new mode, I will believe that it is better than 

 what he at present us:s ; aM other accounts of im- 

 provements, &c. will go with me for nothing. I 

 should say MrC. has seven works. His kindness 

 to me has been remarkable, I dine with him to- 

 morrow in company with the Professor and his 

 friend. I have many results and calculations made 

 here which have been given nie li,y the Professor, 

 (who has spent twelve days at l'«o works) which 

 I could not have obtained for any money, but 

 which I am confident have cost him a large sum. 

 Mr C. ridicules the idea of making refined Sugar 

 at the same establishment at the same time, ac- 

 cording to the poetry of the times. He thinks to 

 j)rouuce good brown sugar is quite sufficient for 

 one man and one process, and ought else would im- 

 pede. His steam engine is 9 horso power. Ill 

 horse power then goes to .evaporate, heat drying 

 rooms, &c. Now the process of the manufacture 

 of Sugar as well as the proper cultivation of the 

 plant, I shall I feel be fully ooinpetent to. 



I wish to be enabled to expend a small sum in 

 procuring models of some and information on oth- 

 ers, which I shall not fiiid myself competent to 

 until I hear froui you. It seems as though things 

 were determined to turn out to my advantage. 

 When the real authors of all the success in Sugar 

 making first came here, they brought with them 

 a young man as Engineer ; he is in this town the 

 >head of an immense establishment for the prepa- 

 ration of machinery for the Sugar business, and 

 to him I have been introduced by the kindness of 

 another gentleman, to whom I brought letters from 

 Paris ; on my deploring the cost of the machinery 

 in present use, he showed me the drawings of a 



tem of management which is truly excellent. Here 

 is a saying, " the Beet culture is at the foundation 

 of all good husbandry," and so it is ; the best 

 crops in the country are raised afler one, two 

 three, and even four crops of Beet, which are not 

 dimged for generally. They do not exhaust the 

 soil, hut their autumns are terribly against them in 

 taking up and liousing, comiielllng them to leave 

 them in the fieMs in pits where they are not ]ro- 

 tected by anything but a covering of earth from 

 the winter's rains. Ffty pounds of the cake mix- 

 ed with one lb. of oil cake are sufficient for the 

 keep of ten sheep for a day, given to them at 

 twice, so that 100 lbs. of Beets, value 25 cts. give 

 6 lb. Sugar, 4 lbs. Molasses, and 25 lbs. Cake, 

 and sufficient food for fattening five large sheep 

 per day. 



Arras, April 4, 1S36. 

 Dear Sir — Pardon me if I tease you with my 

 frequent letters, but the fact is, 1 hear so much 

 of Beet Sugar, I see so much of Beet Sugar, and 

 eat so much of Beet Sugar that you must not won- 

 der if I return to you in a shape of a Marmalade. 

 I believe I told you in my last letter that 1 was 

 setting off for Lisle, Valenciennes and neighbor- 

 hoods ; my main object was to ascertain whi^re 

 was the best system of Sugar making practised 

 that I might be able by observation to know which 

 to prefer ; but I had another end in view, name- 

 ly ; to find out where it was that refined sugar, 

 loaf sugar, was made from the Beet by a single 

 1 rocess : every one who knew nothing of tlie inat- 

 ter assured me it was done somewhere, while all 

 the manufacturers decl.ired the thing was impos- 

 sible ; still I w.is determined if [lossible to hunt it 

 up, and at Famars in the neighborhood of Valen- 

 cies, I found a very large manufactiuer who was 

 absolutely making beautifully white sugar from 

 th ? Beet, by a sin)ple process; and although he is 

 selling it at a price two cents only below the re- 

 fined sugar, yet it is, after aW, powdered sugar, and 

 by no means loaf sugar ; when I told him what I 

 had been led to expect, he declared the thing to 

 be impossible, by no means to be desired, and to- 

 tally incomj)atihle with the profitable pre|iaration 

 of sugar in the brown state, which requires the 

 most incessent care and circumspection while in 

 process, and is of a magnitude suflicient to engross 

 all the time and talent of the most industrious. I 

 have therefore been pursuing an Ignis but not a 

 fntiius, for I have added exceedingly to my knowl- 

 edge and experii^nce, but not one jot to the con- 

 viction which 1 have before entertained, of the 

 facility with which sugar from the Beet might be 

 prepared to any extent ; I am therefore returned 

 to Arras to study the art at the finest establish- 

 ment in France, and where they have a sufficient 

 quantity of the roots remaining for another week's 

 crushing — I hope more. At Valenciennes and 

 the neighborhond there were, three years ago, 

 thirteen sugar manufactories ; now there are six- 

 tyfourl Land which was worth 500f. an arpcnt, 

 will now bring 1200, labor has very much risen. 



and never in any country did I witness such ex- 

 cellent farming. The residuum from the sugar 

 houses is exfremely rich, as a manure, and this 

 they are now spreading on their young crops of 

 clover, which are prodigiously flourishing; they 

 de not maiuire for the ISeet, but for the preced- 

 ing crop, and one half the expense of hoeing and 

 cleaning the Beet is charged to the following 

 crop, which is so much benefitted by tlie opera- 

 tions. The drill which they use, Crespels, sow- 

 ing 8 lbs. of seed to the acre, is a most valuable 

 instrument for the lands in America. At a manu- 

 factory in Valenciennes, conducted by a farmer, 

 who is also a Brewer, a wine merchant and a dis- 

 tiller, I saw sotne very good machinery, which 

 crushes 50,000 lbs. of Beet in 24 hours ; at anoth- 

 er they crush 70,000 lbs. while a third crushes 

 75,000 lbs. evaporating all the juice and crystali- 

 zing all the sugar therefrom in 16 hoursonly. 100 

 lbs. of beet yield 85 lbs. of juice. The brewer 

 purchases beet root for 1 franc per 100 lbs. and 

 sells the pressed cake, for oxen and sheep at 5 

 cents per basket, a!)out half a bushel : on the other 

 side of Valenciennes, at the distance of a few 

 miles, T was introduced to a person whose premi- 

 .ses are enormously large, I saw, in one stable 50 

 large ploughing horses, 7 saddle horses in another 

 stable, 30 fatting oxen, which have nothing but 

 the cake and straw, to feed on, and two of thj 

 largest oxen i have seen for many years, finishing 

 otr with cake mixed with oil cake, a most capital 

 food ; his sheep were feeding on the cake, bnt 

 they were a breeding flock ; his beet roots were 

 very fine, and had been preserved from the frost, 

 much better than those of many of his neighbors, 

 he calculates that, in good season, the beets yield 

 10 per cent of saccharine, say six of crystalized 

 sugar, 3 of molasses, and one of the molasses con- 

 tained in the cake. Now all the manufactories 

 whieh I had yet seen were very large, and con- 

 ducted at an expense of machinery tridy astound- 

 ing ; this I was regreliing to a person in this 

 town, who told me there was a curious man re- 

 siding in one of the back streets, who had made 

 sugar this winter, with machinery of his own in- 

 vention, and almost by the labor of his own hands ; 

 he took ine to see his works, but he had finished 

 crushing: I found him a native genius; he told 

 us he had not the means to purchase the expen- 

 sive machinery, still he was determined to make 

 sugar, and so he did : his premises are small, and 

 his works entirely toithout steam ; his crushing 

 mill is driven by horses, which he feeds upon the 

 cake, and he hires land ready prepared for the 

 beet, of the neighboring Farmer; thus he has ev- 

 ery disadvantage, and yet, in this way he mj'dc 

 100,000 lbs. of sugar from the 2d Sept. to the 21st 

 March (I think he said) and intends to make 200,- 

 000 next year. It is curious to see his machinery, 

 after being so much amongst steam engines, and a 

 power of 120 horses, &c. bnt much of it might be 

 adopted for the use of our Farmers. He has giv- 

 en me permission to make drawings of the whole, 

 and I mean to off coat and work with him at crys- 

 talizing his molasses, the most difficult process by- 

 far. * » # * But the cultivation of the beet 

 embraces three grand and distinct objects ; 1st, 

 the making of sugar, 2d, the feeding of cattle, 3d, 

 the improvement of agriculture or rather of hus- 

 bandry, either of these is of vast importance ; to- 

 gether they form a whole, which I have no fear 

 about, let competition come from what quarter it 



