A Few Popular Facts About Diffusion. 43 



the furnace platform, you will, on equal weights of canes, 

 have expended as nearly as possible about the same 

 engine power as would have been required up to this 

 stage of manufa6lure with mills and their lesser extrac- 

 tion, the still greater expe6led saving in engine-power, 

 originally anticipated with diffusion, not having been 

 altogether realized ; partly because canes are much 

 tougher articles to deal with than beet-roots ; and partly 

 because the use of the old cane mill is continued in the 

 new process for the preparation of the exhausted slices 

 as useful fuel, an expenditure of power that is more than 

 fully compensated for. If the hydraulic attachment is 

 used in connexion with this mill, it should be applied to 

 the megass roller in preference to the top roller, as the 

 former application will not only give squeezed chips 7 

 per cent to 8 per cent dryer than would otherwise be 

 the case, but will avoid other obje6lionable risks that 

 cannot be dealt with in the present paper. Of course 

 the application of hydraulic pressure to the top roller of 

 a two-roller mill is the correft thing, and is much more 

 convenient than any other arrangement. But personally 

 I am totally opposed to the application of any such 

 pressure to the top roller of a three-roller mill ; and un- 

 less it is weighted so as to remain absolutely quiescent, 

 save under the occurrence of strains dangerous to the 

 safety of the machinery, I firmly believe such application 

 to be one of the greatest blunders ever perpetrated in 

 this colony. 



On every hundred tons canes, you will in the case of 

 diffusion obtain about 30 tons chip-fuel, against 37 tons 

 megass with the single mill ; but owing to improved fur- 

 naces, and the special conditions under which the chips 



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