SUGAR. 



215 



An acre planted with sugar-cane in the West Indies will produce 

 about 20 tons of cane on an average. This cane contains about 90 

 per cent, of juice, and the percentage of saccharine matter in the 

 sugar-cane juice varies from 18 to 22 per cent. Taking an average 

 percentage of sugar in the cane as 18 per cent., the weight of sugar 

 grown upon an acre in the West Indies is 72 cwts. The average of 

 modern beetroot cultivation in Eui'ope may be taken as 20 tons of 

 beetroot per acre ; and the percentage of sugar in a favourable season 

 at 10 per cent. An acre of beetroot in Europe therefore raises 40 cwts. 

 of sugar, and that sugar is diluted to a much higher degree with 

 water, and contaminated with impurities of all kinds, which render 

 it much more difficult and costly to extract and crystallize than the 

 cane sugar. Modern improvements in agriculture have gradually 

 raised the yield of beetroot crops, and may do so still further, but 

 in a similar degree is the agriculture of sugar plantations capable 

 of further important improvements, and the yield of cane capable of 

 being considerably increased. So far as the production of sugar is 

 concerned, the advantage is so greatly and obviously on the side of 

 the sugar-cane, that the decision against beetroot cultivation is arrived 

 at as an a p'iori judgment, which has hitherto been held with con- 

 siderable tenacity by the majority of the agriculturists and practical 

 men in this country. The actual success and rapid growth of beet- 

 root industry on the Continent has for a long time been ascribed to 

 accidental causes, and it is only at a very recent date that other 

 opinions have gained ground amongst a small number of scientific and 

 practical men. The element of success which has been so frequently 

 overlooked, and which still is i)Owerful enough to tui'n the scale in 

 the competition between sugar-cane and beetroot in the open market 

 of the world, is the refuse material from the beetroot plants. The 

 extracted sugar-cane is a mass of woody fibre saturated more or less 

 with juice, according to the greater or less degree of imperfection in 

 the process of extraction. The proper application of this sugar-cane 

 trash or bagasse, would be for manuring the cane fields, but the actual 

 use which is made of it in the colonies is for fuel, and in many 

 localities it forms the only fuel available for the diflerent purposes of 

 raising the steam and evaporating the juice. In either of the above 

 applications the value which this cane trash represents over and above 

 the value of the sugar itself is practically nil. The case is difierent, 

 however, with regard to beetroot. The material of the root is of 

 a complex character, and the solid residue of the extraction of the 

 juice is the well-known beetroot pulp, a material of great value for 

 cattle feeding. The weight of the pulp is about 18 per cent, of that 

 of the beet ; the yield of pulp from an acre of land is therefore 

 about 72 cwts. 



" The total produce of an acre of beet may therefore be considered 

 equivalent to two distinct crops, say a crop of sugar-cane from some- 

 what more than half an acre of a West Indian plantation, and a crop 

 of mangel- wiu'z el from somewhat less than half an acre of European 

 farm land growing mangel. It is obvious that the cultivation of beet 

 must i^ay therefore in a similar ratio as the two branches of agri- 

 culture are remunerative in their respective districts ; but this is not 



