456 Canadian Record of Science. 
alluded to as resembling honey and used in medicine was 
sugar or not. Most probably it was, but in the form of syrup 
and not at first in crystals. 
Galen and Pliny, in the beginning of our era, spoke of a 
- substance called saccharum found in Arabia Felix, and only 
used in medicine, and in the Bible we all know of the men- 
tion of sweet calamus and cinnamon in Solomon’s song, and 
of sweet cane in Isaiah and Jeremiah. Herodotus speaks of 
manufactured honey, and Nearchus, one of Alexander’s 
admirals, tells of a reed which gave honey without bees. 
Moses Chorenensis, however, is the first writer to mention 
the boiling of plants, in this case sugar-canes, for the ex- 
traction of sugar, and the first Kuropean home of the sugar 
industry was in Sicily where Frederick Barbarossa found 
many factories when he invaded Italy in 1121. From Sicily 
the culture of the cane gradually spread into Spain, and 
from thence was carried by the Spaniards into the West 
Indian Islands and Brazil. Here it found a congenial cli- 
mate similar to the Indian one, from whence it came, and 
soon it became a source of great wealth, there being no less 
than twenty-eight sugar factories in San Domingo in 1518. 
It became apparent that the cane was meant to flourish in 
tropical countries and the cultivation in Europe died out, so 
that for over 300 years sugar came to Europe over the 
sea from equatorial countries and was produced almost 
entirely from the sugar-cane, which had come to be looked 
upon as the only practical source of sugar. 
In the year 1747, however, a German chemist named Mark- 
graf announced the discovery of 6 per cent. of sugar in cer- 
tain sorts of roots which grew in northern Europe. This 
was looked upon as a botanical fact of small value to the 
world at large, until another German named Achard erected 
a little factory on his farm at Cunern near Breslau, and began 
actually to produce fine white sugar from Markgraf’s roots. 
Furthermore, he made money at the same time, which was 
vastly more important, and drew the attention of all thinking 
men to the fact that a new source of wealth had arisen in 
Europe. From that moment, in fact, a mighty rival to the 
