CONSTRUCTION OF CANE MILLS. 



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should be sufficient to allow a large number of canes to be 

 passed through them at once, so as to ensure a rapid yield 

 of juice, conjointly with slowness of motion. Second, 

 That the diameter of the rollers should be sufficient to 

 allow the canes to be taken hold of readily, without the 

 necessity of grooving, and to ensure the more perfect 

 pressure and lamination of the canes ; because, in rollers of 

 large diameter, the points of pressure not being so acute as 

 in smaller ones, the canes are more perfectly laminated, 

 and the megass is delivered dry, without being reduced to 

 fragments. The continuous sheet in which it is delivered, 

 tends also to prevent re-absorption, as by a little mechani- 

 cal arrangement, it can be made more immediately to leave 

 its contact with the other roller, while the uninterrupted 

 pressure prevents any of the juice passing over the upper 

 surface of the roller along with it. In a powerful mill, 

 with horizontal cylinders of large diameter, revolving 

 slowly, the megass ought to be delivered like a sheet of 

 thick pasteboard, and I have no doubt in that case, that 

 80 per cent, of juice would be readily obtained from canes 

 of an average quality, leaving only 10 per cent, in the 

 megass, a quantity so small as not to be sensibly appreci- 

 able, and from which a powerful hydraulic press would get 

 very little more ; so that, assuming the cane to contain 18 

 per cent, of sugar, such a mill would extract 16 per cent, 

 instead of the 10 per cent, usually obtained, leaving only 2 

 per cent, in the megass, a quantity so small as not to 

 warrant the expense of machinery for its extraction. But 



