AGRICULTURAL MANUFACTURES. 465 
chemists to be the strongest in saccharine power, and forms the 
finest crystals. 
The second kind is what is termed a factitious sugar, the 
product of the grape and other ripe fruits, and starch or farina. 
‘This kind is something similar to the common East India sugar, 
soft and weak, not forming regular crystals, as at present manipu- 
lated, but settled into tufted concretions, like the head of a 
cauliflower. The product of these is greater than that of the 
former, the grape containing about forty per cent. of saccharine 
matter ; whilst the farina, being itself already a residuum reduced 
by a simple mechanical process, requires only the addition of a 
chemical agent—sulphuric acid—to convert the whole mass into 
sugar, weight for weight. In fact, by the addition of the chemical 
agent, and the water necessary to dilute it, 1 cwt. of farina willl 
produce 14 ewt. of sugar. Both these factitious sugars, upon 
being tested by the saccharometer, prove to be greatly inferior 
to the first description, containing a proportion of not more than 
60 to 100 of saccharine power. It is, therefore, only when the 
potato is cheap enough to be manufactured into farina that it will 
be profitable to make sugar from it. The sulphuric acid is used in 
the proportion of 1 part to 100 of water. The process is too long 
to be inserted here; but it may be stated that diseased potatoes 
will yield starch as well as those that are sound. In the fatal 
years of 18146, 7, and 8, an immense quantity of diseased potatoes, 
in all stages of decay, were brought from the country into Dublin, 
and purchased by a starch maker, who made a fortune by extract- 
ing the farina. The process is so simple and inexpensive that we 
are surprised it has not been adopted by the English and Scotch 
potato-growers, in those seasons when the disease is general. 
Whilst the Napoleonic wars continued, and foreign produce was 
excluded, the price of sugar was sustained, and the manufacturers 
having a monopoly, made but little progress in improving the 
quality of their article. It was neither properly clarified nor per- 
fectly crystallized, and nothing but the absence of competition with 
colonial sugar enabled the manufacturers to sell the wretched stuff 
they made; and when the peace of 1815 returned, and it had to 
sustain the competition, the manufacture rapidly declined, notwith- 
standing a high protecting duty, and the desire of the Government to 
support it as a permanent branch of national industry. In 1828 the 
quantity produced was only 4800 tons, being the lowest ebb to which 
it was reduced. 
