No. 5. — 1850.] SUGAB MANUFACTURE. 



223 



1 am puzzled to know, indeed, what substances they may be 

 which are separated by the defecating agents. So long as 

 mundi was present I concluded that it was that ; but I 

 have lately manipulated liquor in which I could actually 

 detect nothing but what had been put in, and yet we have 

 proved that without anything sugar can be made (thouhg the 

 litmus paper be unreddened at all) r and that not even with 

 the after addition of lime. A thick scum forms on the top 

 after boiling, and the syrup assumes a viscous character. 



From the hopelessly black colour of the native jaggery 

 made from limed liquor (peni), I thought good sugar 

 could not be made from it. However, I procured a quantity 

 for trial. The enormous quantity of lime that had been 

 put into the chatties was soon apparent, and it was partly 

 diffused through the liquor like a very fine impalpable 

 sediment. Fine English towels would not stop it from 

 running through them. I earnestly beg for assistance also 

 to enable a plan to be established for the extraction of this 

 floating lime. It is true that most settles to the bot- 

 tom, as I have since found, and might be left behind by 

 drawing off the supernatant liquor ; but still some is lost, 

 which I am anxious to avoid. Now herein seems to be a 

 great difference between cane juice and peni. Whatever 

 quantity of lime one puts to the former seems taken up by 

 it, and to exert its baneful influence at once; but in the 

 toddy, as I say, we find the most of it at the bottom, while 

 the supernatant liquid remains quite limpid, and not to have 

 taken up more lime than so much water would have done. 

 Although by the first experiment with the limed liquor I 

 did not succeed in getting out the half of the lime, which I 

 estimated correctly at over an ounce to a gallon, the sugar 

 did not turn out nearly so black as I thought it would have 

 done, and is the sample marked No. 3. These trials, I may 

 add, were all made with open chatties. 



