PROCEEDINGS OF THE FARMERS' CLUB. 183 



coal. Some of the filters of the refiners here arc thirty feet high. For this 

 purpose bones arc burnt and giound lO about the fineness of common pow- 

 der, and the dust carefully screened out. In the filtering operation the 

 charcoal takes up all the color. The charcoal is frequently renewed by 

 heating in a retort to a red heat, which burns off the matter collected from 

 the syrup. Our seasons here are too short for manufacturing sorghum sugar 

 up(»n a large scale, as it is in the West Indies, where they have months to 

 work up the crop, while with us the work must all be concentrated into a 

 few daj's. Let it be the duty of the Club to send out light upon this subject. 



Mr. Jireh Bull thought tliat because cheese was now made in neighbor- 

 hood facttu-ios, instead of families, thatsorglium could be manufactured in the 

 same way. If it is fvrofitable, there would be no lack of capital to establish 

 sugar works in every neighborhood. What is wanted is information upon 

 the subject. Let it be the business of this Club to send out light soon upon 

 the subject. 



!Mr. :?olon Robinson. — The great difficulty about the matter was that the 

 cane is so heavy an article that it would not bear transportation any con- 

 siderable distance. It can and should be grown for domestic purposes 

 upon every farm. It is very doubtful whether it ever can or will be grown 

 upon a large scale, for the purpose of making sugar, as the true cane is in 

 Louisiana. Some gentlemen think it depends upon the price of sugar 

 whether sorghum will continue to be grown, I do not think so, so far as it 

 affects it as a domestic institution, because maple sugar and syrup have 

 been manufactured ever since America was discovered, without regard to 

 the prce of cane sugar. 



Pro', Mapes said farmers would be much more successful in boiling their 

 syrup if they could do it more rapidly and at a higher heat, which can only 

 be done in a closed boiler. It is essential to raise the heat to two hundred 

 and fa'ty degrees, particularly as the sorghum juice is weaker than that of 

 the tnie cane. Strong molasses weighs fourteen pounds to the gallon. As 

 the Hjward vacuum pan cannot be used except in a large manufactory, the 

 Professor described and recommended a process by which atmospheric air 

 is forced into the bottom of the boiler through a pipe and discharged, as it 

 were, through the nose of a fine watering-pot. This enables the syrup to 

 boil it a lower temperature, but is not used by sugar refiners, because the 

 prodict is never as white as when boiled in vacuo. 



Ml. E. Williams said that associated effort to work sorghum was not alwjyys 

 successful. There was such an one in New Jersey this year, and much of 

 the 8}rtip manufactured had soured, and proved almost worthless. 



Sugar from Indian Corn. 



The Chairman thought that sorghum growing was likely to prove less 

 important in consequence of the recent discovery that sugar could be made 

 from Iidian corn. He had been assured that sugar refiners of this city 

 have jaid the inventor $400,000 fur his patent. 



Pro'. Mapes contended that the principle was not patentable, neither 

 was V new. Lavoisier, who ditd in the old French Revolution, gave the 

 process, and showed how sugar could be made from any rooty fiber that 

 contained starch. He thinks that it is highly probable that the new pro- 



