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SUGAE. 



what similar to Paraguay. Looking at the use of its leaves, we see 

 no reason why it should not be cultivated with remunerative profits. 



Such a valuable plant, doubtless, is worth the attention of some 

 colonial planters, and with a careful collection of leaves only, and a 

 better method of drying them, the tea would be rendered both grateful 

 and palatable. But we have been so much accustomed to tea leaves 

 being curled up and not powdered to dust, that possibly some pre- 

 judice might exist against using it in the form of powder, although 

 the infusion is thereby very readily made. 



SUGAE. 



The luxuries of man soon become his necessities, and he works 

 with intense thought and labour for things of which he once was 

 wholly ignorant. This is the case with sugar. No longer than five 

 hundred years ago our European race did not know sugar at all. A 

 hundred years ago it was a great luxury. Now it is sold at 3d. or 

 4:d. per pound, and used in abundance as an every-day article, by the 

 poorest people. The sugar of commerce is an artificial article, like 

 our distilled liquors, yet the saccharine principle, a distinctive element 

 of food, is found in almost all the j)lants we use, especially the most 

 valuable. It is met with in the stalk of tbe maize, and molasses has 

 been repeatedly made from Indian corn. The beetroot contains it in 

 large quantity, and most of the sugar now used in France is made 

 from the beet, its culture having been forced by the Emperor Napoleon 

 by means of high import duties. Several other vegetables contain the 

 saccharine principle, which is thus diffused through the vegetable 

 world as an essential element of human food. When we treat it, 

 therefore, as a necessity of life, we are not far wrong ; for, in one form 

 or another, we must consume it. The fruits contain it, and the very 

 trees, as the maple, the hickory, and the palms. We are thus 

 invited to use this saccharine element with all our food, and as the 

 concentrated form is the most convenient and manageable, we make 

 it artificially. 



Though the manufacture of sugar was commenced in the West 

 Indies early in the sixteenth century, yet its use in domestic economy 

 did not become general in Europe or America before the beginning of 

 the last century. In the year 1700 only 10,000 tons were used in 

 Great Britain, though the English were at that time the leading 

 manufacturers of sugar. The consumption of sugar in the British 

 islands in the year 1875 was 900,000 tons. In almost every country 

 the consumption of sugar is steadily increasing. 



Production. — The following may be taken as a rough estimate of the 

 production of sugar over the globe at the close of 1876 : 



Tons. 



Cane sugar 2,140^000 



Beetroot sugar 1,320,000 



Date „ 150,000 



Maple „ 20,000 



Sorghum „ 20,000 



