IMPROVEMENT OF THE SUGAR CANE. 87 
saccharine contents of the sugar cane, and which, although 
well known to be incorreét by the great majority of 
planters engaged in the sugar industry in places where 
modern methods have been adopted, are still frequently 
given as correét in works claiming to be authoritative, 
and form the basis of newspaper articles which state, as 
though giving faéts beyond the possibility of contradic- 
tion, that we are only getting from one-third to one-half 
of the sugar out of the cane which it contains. 
About 1790, DUTRONE iu his Azstotre de la Canne 
pointed out that the sugar cane contained three kinds 
of juice, “ one aqueous, another saccharine and the third 
mucous,” and with this statement the matter rested for 
very many years, 
The next enquirer into the saccharine contents of the 
sugar cane, as far as I can find recorded, was Mr. THOMAS 
KERR, then a planter in Barbados, afterwards Governor of 
the Falkland Islands, who carried out a series of experi- 
ments on fra€tional crushings of sugar canes in March 
1852, in which he found that the sugar contents of the 
residual juices was always less than that of the expressed 
juice ; and these results were explained by Dr. J. D. MAy- 
COCK, as due to the juice in the sap vessels probably not 
being so richin sugar as that in the cellular tissue, and 
that the walls of the former being very much stronger 
than those of the latter resist a power which crushes 
the latter and expresses the juice from it. Dr. ICERY of 
Mauritius in his well known “ Researches on the juice of 
the Sugar Cane,” apparently unaware of the investigations 
which I have alluded to, after stating that the question had 
never been studied, gives figures which he obtained in 
O@ober, 1864, showing that the additional juice yielded 
