April, 1914. 



MAINE 



AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION 



ORONO, MAINE. 



CHAS. D. WOODS, Director 



ANALYSTS. 



James M. Bartlett Herman H. Hanson 



Royden L. Hammond Edward E. Sawyer 



Elmer R. Tobey Harold P. Vannah 



d^fficial Snsipecttonsi 



59 



MOLASSES. 



The sweet taste of molasses is due to the cane sugar which 

 it carries. This kind of sugar is called sucrose by chemists 

 and is found in numerous plants. Sugar cane and sugar beets 

 are the common sources of sucrose, but the sap of the maple, 

 the juices of sorghum and of corn and large numbers of other 

 plants, contain more or less sugar in the form of sucrose. The 

 sagar of honey which chemists call levulose, while practically 

 as sweet as sucrose, does not make the clear crystals familiar 

 in the case of sucrose. Dextrose is the name of a sugar that 

 occurs in nature in the grape. It is also made artificially from 

 starch by treating it with acid. The glucose or corn sirup of 

 commerce is a thick sirupy colorless product made by incom- 

 pletely hydrolyzing starch and decolorizing and evaporating the 

 product. It contains dextrose, maltose, dextrine, ash and water 

 and is standardized within certain limits. The food value of 

 glucose is practically equal to that of sucrose, but it does not 

 have the sweet pleasant taste characteristic of cane sugar. 



Note. All correspondence relative to the inspection laws should be 

 addressed to the Commissioner of Agriculture, Augusta Maine. 



