388 TRANSACTIONS OF THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 



Cane sugar was probably known to the ancient Greeks, for Dioscorides, 

 in the first century, refers to a concrete honey resembling salt in appear- 

 ance and brittleness, produced by canes growing in India and Arabia Felix. 

 Pliny records the same fact, but adds that the sugar was only employed in 

 medicine. It scarcely came into use, however, in Europe, till the period of 

 the Crusaders, and not as a common article of food until after the trans- 

 plantation of the sugar cane from Madeira to the West India Islands, in the 

 year 1506. 



In the year 1147, Marggrass, a German chemist, discovered that cane 

 sugar existed ready formed in the roots of many plants, especially in beet 

 root, but nearly fifty years elapsed before any attempt was made to estab- 

 lish a factory for making beet root sugar. This was tlien done in Silesia, 

 but without much success. 



The first energetic impulse was given to the manufacture of beet root 

 sugar by Napoleon. Extensive experiments were made on the cultivation 

 of the beet root, and the best methods of obtaining its juice, and extracting 

 the sugar from it. Factories were set at work under his auspices, and it 

 is represented that the first samples of sugar produced were conveyed at 

 once to the Emperor, who received them with great pleasure, and placed 

 them among the ornaments of his drawing-room. 



Sugar, identical with that of the cane, may be obtained from a great 

 variety of plants. It exists in the melon, carrot, pumpkin and turnip, and 

 in the palm, and unripe Indian corn plants, and always as a primary secre- 

 tion. In Ceylon and elsewheie, it has been prepared from the cocoa nut 

 tree, and other palms. 



The yield of sugar varies with the kind of raw material, the nature of the 

 climate and soil in and upon which it is grown, the mode of cultivation, 

 and process of manufacture. 



The best canes for sugar are those which have not flowered, or which, 

 on account of some peculiarity of cultivation, show no tendency to flower 

 at all. The part of the cane most rich in sugar is the lower part of the 

 stalk, from which the leaves have dropped ofi". The stalk contains about 

 half its weight of juice very prone to ferment. It has been often analyzed 

 and found to consist of about 183 parts of water, 208 parts crystallizable 

 sugar, 1"5 of uncrystallizable sugar, 001 cerin, 0"25 green wax, 04 albu- 

 men (=999-21) in 1,000 parts. 



In the manufacture of sugar, the first step is to express the juice. As it 

 begins to ferment in a few minutes and to form acetic acid, it must be 

 promptly subjected to evaporation in order to obtain sugar. For this pur- 

 pose its free acid is first saturated with lime, otherwise the crystallization 

 of the sugar would be interfered with. Other articles are substituted for 

 lime, but none of them have been so efiectual as the sulphate of alumina. 

 The juice is next duly concentrated; upon which a crystallization of brown- 

 ish grains takes place after cooling. These grains constitute the raw sugar 

 of commerce. Six pounds of juice in the East Indies, and eight pounds in 

 the West Indies, yield one pound of raw sugar. This is afterwards puri- 

 fied, chiefly by elutrition with a little water, solution in water heated by 

 steam, clarification with blood and alumina, filtration through animal char, 

 coal, concentration in vacuo at 150 degrees, crystallization, and displace- 



