STATE IN WHICH SUGAR EXISTS IN THE CANE. 



69 



facturers of machinery for crushing caries, with whom I 

 have communicated, or whose opinions have been published, 

 appear to be impressed with this fallacy. It is necessary 

 that all persons engaged in the manufacture of sugar, 

 should be disabused of this idea, as opposed both to reason 

 and evidence; because, assuming that the cane contains 

 two parts of sugar, dissolved in seven parts of water, which 

 is about the proportions in which it is proved they exist 

 in ripe canes, and knowing that crystals of sugar are 

 soluble in half their weight of cold water, it is impossible 

 that sugar can exist in the crystalline form, when in con- 

 tact with three and a-half times its weight of water, an 

 amount sufficient to dissolve seven times the quantity of 

 crystallized sugar. This can be readily proved, by any 

 inquirer, making the simple experiment with refined sugar 

 and water. 



Osmin Hervey says, — " Moreover, a liquor never crys- 

 tallizes from its mother-water, without leaving it at the 

 point of saturation; and this explains why M. Avequin 

 obtained so much melasses, or mother-water, from crys- 

 tallised, sugar, whilst M. Plagne, on crystallising the 

 mother- water two or three times, obtained almost the whole 

 mass crystallised, a circumstance inseparable from Colo- 

 nial manufacture. What we advance is sanctioned by 

 practice. The finest clayed sugar is used in preparing 

 royal sugar. The syrup w^hich is boiled in the vacuum 

 pan may be considered as solution of sugar almost pure; 

 yet at the first crystallization only 50 per cent, of the 



