SUGAR CULTURE. 265 



have estimated that a hectar of cane gives a mean 

 of twelve cubic metres of juice, from which are 

 extracted, by the method at present in use, at most, 

 ten or twelve per cent, of raw sugar. Considering, 

 therefore, the juice as a liquid charged with salts, it 

 contains, according to the fertility of the soil, from 

 twelve to sixteen per cent, of crystallizable sugar. 

 The sugar maple, in good lands in the United States, 

 yields 450 grammes of sugar to eighteen kilogram- 

 mes of sap, being two and a half per cent. The 

 same quantity of sugar is yielded by . the beet root, 

 comparing this quantity with the entire weight of 

 root. Twenty thousand kilogrammes of beets, grown 

 in good land, yield five hundred kilogrammes of 

 raw sugar. 



As the sugar cane loses one-half its weight, when 

 the juice is expressed, it gives — comparing, not the 

 product of juices, but the root of the common beet 

 with the sugar cane — six times more raw sugar, to 

 an equal weight of vegetable matter, than the beet 

 root. The juice of the cane varies in its constituent 

 parts, according to the nature of the soil, the quan- 

 tity of rain, the distribution of heat in the different 

 seasons, and the earlier or later disposition of the 

 plant to flower. It is not alone in the greater or less 

 quantity of sugar held in solution, as some sugar- 

 makers suppose ; the difference consists rather in the 



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