64 
On Sugar . — The sugar in about three weeks grows tole- 
rably dry and fair ; it is then said to be cured, and the pro- 
cess is finished. Sugar thus obtained is called Muscovado, 
and is the raw material from which the British sugar bakers 
make their loaf or refined lump. There is another sort 
which was formerly much approved in Great Britain for 
domestic purposes, and was generally known by the name 
of Lisbon sugar ; it is fair, but of a soft nature, and in the 
West Indies is called clayed sugar. The process is as fol- 
lows. A quantity of sugar from the cooler is put into coni- 
cal pots or pans, called by the French formes, with the 
points downwards, having a hole about half an inch in dia- 
meter at the bottom for the molasses to drain through, but 
which at first is closed with a plug. When the sugar in 
these pots is cool and becomes a fixed body, which is dis- 
coverable by the middle of the top falling in (usually about 
twelve hours from the first potting of the sugar), the plug 
is taken out and the pot placed over a large jar intended to 
receive the syrup or molasses that drains from it. In this 
state it is left as long as the molasses continues to drop, 
which it will do from twelve to fourteen hours ; when a 
stratum of clay is spread on the sugar and moistened with 
water, which oozing imperceptibly through the pores of the 
clay, unites intimately with and dilutes the molasses, con- 
sequently more of it comes away than from sugar cured in 
the hogshead, and the sugar of course becomes so much the 
whiter and purer. A pound of sugar from a gallon of raw 
juice or liquor is reckoned in Jamaica a very good }delding. 
The loss of weight in claying is about one third. Thus a 
pot of 60 lbs. is reduced to 40 lbs. But if the molasses 
which is drawn off in this practice be reboiled it will give 
near 40 per cent of sugar, so that the real loss is little more 
than one fourth. East India sugars being ranked among 
the Company’s imports as manufactured goods, pays a duty 
of £37. 16s. 3d. per cent ad valorem, on sale. 
