Diffusion versus Double Crushing,' 



By H, von Ziegesar, 



jHEN Mr. Duncan asked me some time ago to 

 read a paper before the Society about Diffu- 

 sion, I readily assented as this is a subje6l 

 which I feel deeply interested in, but I forgot at the 

 time, or did not realize, that instead of addressing you in 

 my smoothly flowing mother tongue, I would have to 

 do so in a language which somehow has always refused 

 to fit in with my native speaking apparatus, I must 

 therefore apologize, gentlemen, if the idiom in which I 

 am about to deliver my views does not always come up 

 to what you would call " choice English." 



Gentlemen ! In the following remarks I shall endeavour 

 to show what diffusion has done for the sugar manufac- 

 ture in this colony up to now, and what it might have 

 done or might do for Demerara. 



" Necessity is the mother of progress," we say in 

 German and I find that Englishmen too acknowledge 

 the truth of this old proverb by the similar saying, 

 *' necessity teaches many things." Of necessity or rather 

 of distress there is at present plenty in all sugar growing 

 countries, and especially in Demerara, as we all of us 

 know only too well, owing to the depression of sugar 

 prices, a sinking which in all probability will continue 

 for some time and will render the present state of dis- 

 tress even worse. It is to be hoped therefore, that the 

 intelligence of the sugar manufa6lurers will effect a 



* Read at the August Meeting of the Society. 



GG 



