AGRICULTURE IN 1820. 37 
75 gallons each in 40 or 50 minutes, in open coppers, 
the fuel employed being the dried cane, after it has 
passed through the mill. 
The cane mill of three horizontal iron cylinders.4 or 
5 feet long, and about 2 feet diameter, one over the 
other two, does not press the liquor so perfectly out of 
the cane, but that a small portion of the saccharine 
principle still remains in the crushed cane. When this 
is carried to the shed for drying it therefore ferments, 
and the heat produced has the same effe& in drying the 
cane as has the heat of a haystack in Europe. The 
expressed cane is called megas, and is preserved in 
large logés, or sheds, being the only fuel used in the 
_ sugar-boiling process. 
Though it is absolutely necessary that the main bulk 
of the megas should ferment and dry in the shed or 
logé, it is found by experience that when taken from the 
mill and dried in the sun, a great change takes place, 
for the spirtuous fermentation destroys a great deal of the 
inflammable principle, and it requires much less megas 
when dried in the sun to make a hhd. of sugar than if taken 
from the logé where it has heated ; a saving of nearly 25 
per cent is thus effe€ted of fuel. But this can only be 
done in dry weather, say, four or five months in the year, 
sufficient time, however, to enable a careful manager to 
keep his stock of fuel ahead of his consumption. 
The sugar, when of a proper consistency in the last 
copper, is struck, or ladled out into coolers, being broad 
shallow troughs of about six feet square. 
Four or five of these coolers, containing four-or five of 
these strikes, will give four hhds, of sugar. In thisstage 
of the process there appears to be considerable room for 
