234 RESEARCHES ON 
cation attributed to the juice of the sugar cane. I shall have, in fact, to 
seek further if the alterations and diseases which are said to belong to 
the cane, in developing themselves in this plant, and in modifying more 
or less its organisation and its appearances, act equally on the nature 
and proportion of the various substances from which its juice is formed. 
The sugar industry of the colonies has been, and is still, blamed 
with a kind of complacency, because planters allow themselves to be 
guided by blind practice, and disdain the ameliorations which science 
would not delay in introducing into the process of sugar extraction, were 
they less influenced by routine and preconceived notions, and. were they 
willing to acquire a more perfect knowledge of those primal products 
which they manipulate, and were they also willing to profit by that 
example which a rival industry in Europe offers them, the intelligent 
efforts of which have been crowned with the most complete success. 
Generally speaking, such reproaches are unjust, and arise only from an 
unexact appreciation of the colonial practice. If it has been said with 
reason that about thirty years ago more than two-thirds of the sugar 
contained in the cane were lost by the methods then in use, may it not 
be said at the present time with equal certainty that six -tenths, at least, 
of this sugar is easily obtained by the machines at present in use, thanks 
to the progress which has been realised and the initiative of which has 
not been always foreign to the industry of the colony. Such progress is 
mainly the simple result of the perfection and the complete modifica- 
tion which the evaporating apparatus has undergone, which in this 
colony may now be found on nearly every estate of any importance. 
The method which comprehends particularly the care necessary to 
be given to the cane juice during the process of evaporation, has not un- 
fortunately experienced all the improvements of which it was susceptible ; 
this method still is what it was at the beginning of the present century, 
notwithstanding the experiments of which it has been the object, and 
which have all failed in presence of those obstacles which have not been 
sufficiently taken into consideration. 
If, as the results of analyses made under circumstances not very 
favourable, there was at first an excessive exaggeration of the import- 
ance of those elements which concurred with the saccharine matter 
forming the juice of the cane ; at a later period, the importance of some 
of those substances during the manufacture of sugar has been too much 
neglected. 
The predominating scientific idea of the present time with regard to 
the nature of the cane juice, which is considered as almost pure saccha- 
rine water, does not appear to us proper to be henceforth accepted with- 
out limitation. This juice presents in its normal condition, in special 
circumstances, which we shall shortly explain, certain modifications 
which must be thoroughly considered if we wish to arrive at a full ex- 
planation of the different results often obtained from the same processes of 
manufacture. This very simple composition attributed to the cane juice 
