514 



Analysis of Sugar Cane. 



which I have less relied, because the experiments on which they 

 rest, appeared to me inaccurate. 



My analysis of the vesou sent from Martinique demonstrates, that 

 the whole of the sugar contained in the cane is crystalizable. 

 That I consider the important result of my labors, for all the che- 

 mists who have gone before me have admitted the existence of a 

 large proportion of liquid sugar or molasses in the cane, and have 

 thus so far justified the notorious imperfection of the colonial 

 manufacture. M. Avequin only confirms former ideas by admitting 

 that the sugar cane of Louisiana contains for seventeen parts of 

 sugar, five of molasses and extractive matter. 



I thought it sufficient to oppose by facts the opinions of Casaux 

 and Dutrone on the pre -existence of molasses in the cane, and to 

 shew, that this substance is formed by the alteration of the juice in 

 the colonial process." 



Result of the Researches of M. Plagne, on the composition of Vesou. 



In a recent work M. Peligot has been led to consider the juice 

 of the Aruncdo sacharifera as sugared matter, of which the sac- 

 charine matter wholly crystalizable, amounts to 18 or 20 per cent. 

 That figure, as has been remarked by M. Robiquet and M. Guibourt 

 is precisely that which had been found some years ago by a phar- 

 macie, M. Avequin, in his researches into the composition of the 

 sugar-cane. 



I may be allowed in my turn to remark, that one of my former 

 fellow-labourers at the Ecole Polytechnique, M. Plagne, arrived at the 

 same result in 1826. His experiments detailed in five successive 

 reports addressed to the Minister of Marine in 1827, establish that 

 the juice of the cane contains, as well in Martinique as in the Coast 

 of Coromandel, more than 20 per cent, of crystalizable sugar, that 

 can be obtained wholly of the juice by rapidly evaporating at a 

 temperature not exceeding 212° Fahr. ; that the quantity of molasses 

 under the treatment is null or insignificant ; that rapid evaporation 

 is the more desirable, because cane juice contains a substance which 

 otherwise converts the whole of the sugar into various matter. 



