28 BULLETIN 486, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE, 
tain on an average about 88 to 90 per cent of its weight in juice. 
The best modern sugar-factory mills with 9 or 12 rollers and with 
"saturation" (addition of water between successive pressings) can 
extract about 80 to 85 per cent of the weight of cane in juice. Power 
mills with a single set of three rollers may effect an extraction up to 
about 68 per cent. Those of small design, as used on the sirup- 
making farms, rarely exceed 65 per cent. The small mills driven by 
6 to 8 horsepower gasoline engines usually give an extraction of 55 
to 65 per cent, and the horsepower mills frequently even less. With 
average cane and good management of the mill, the extraction, even 
with these small mills, should not be below 58 to 63 per cent of the 
weight of the cane. 
The sucrose (common sugar) content of cane is especially subject 
to variation with degree of maturity, seasonal conditions, etc. About 
11 to 14 per cent may be taken as the usual sucrose content of the 
Fig. 15. — A gasoline-power sugar-cane loader. 
juice in the Southern States. Accompanying the sucrose we may 
expect to find 1.5 to 2 per cent of reducing sugars (dextrose and 
levulose, frequently spoken of as glucose). In the earliest part of 
the harvest season the sucrose content is lower and the reducing 
sugars higher than they are later. With good mature cane, such as 
is usually produced in tropical countries, the reducing sugars almost 
vanish. Besides these sugars, the juice contains from 1.3 to 2 per 
cent of solids other than sugar. With the usual losses in extraction 
and other unavoidable losses in the manufacture of sugar and sirup, 
the actual yield of sugar under favorable conditions in a large fac- 
tory is 140 to 180 pounds per ton of cane, or about 2 to 2.8 tons of 
sugar per acre of good plant cane on Mississippi Eiver Delta land. 
The actual yield of sirup is about 18 to 24 gallons per ton of cane, or 
about 400 to 525 gallons, equal to 12 to 16 barrels of sirup, per acre 
