THE JUICE OF THE SUGAR CANE. 235 
is not only opposed to the daily practice of the sugar manufactories, it is 
also opposed to an attentive and continuous study of the cane at diffe- 
rent periods of its development. From this source arise difficulties and 
obstacles in the manufacture of sugar which have been attributed to the 
inexperience of the planter, and to his pretended desire not to depart 
from the routine path marked out for him by his predecessors. 
Chance, that providence in all rising industries, has from the very 
commencement of colonial sugar enterprise, revealed the chief indica- 
tions to which the cane juice was subordinated during the process of 
evaporation, in order to produce a sugar of good quality in sufficient 
quantity. Thus, whatever apparatus may be used, that ancient method 
has not been departed from, which will continue to be a necessity so 
long as our present legislation will not allow us, by the employment of 
animal charcoal, to manufacture a refined sugar at the first essay. 
In the present condition of our market, and in presence of all those 
conflicting eventualities which so heavily press upon the productions of 
Mauritius, so complete a reform cannot be realised. The colonial planters 
cannot then, like the manufacturers of beet sugar, determine beforehand 
the progress of their manufacture, and fix, in an absolute degree, the 
quality which, in accordance with the processes at their disposal, was to 
furnish the greatest amount of realisable production. Limited in their 
action, and bound down by necessities unknown to the European manu- 
facturers, the colonial planters have to calculate, not the greatest product 
of a determinate volume of cane juice, but the most remunerative price 
which such quantity of cane juice will bring, according to those shades 
of difference recognised by the colonial markets, and which are far from 
having any relation to the saccharine richness of the product obtained. 
In such a condition of things, we must be prepared to recognise notable 
differences in the results furnished by the examination of those secondary 
syrups which come from a manufactory, according to those more or less 
important types which such manufactory produces. For, as I shall here- 
after show, the first qualities obtained by our modern processes cannot 
be realised except by sacrificing a quantity of sugar far more consider- 
able than is generally thought. This loss will be also the more apparent in 
proportion as the cane juice employed will be in one of these conditions 
to which I shall allude at the conclusion of this memoir. 
I shall begin by examining the degree of pressure which can be ob- 
tained by the means in use at the present time in Mauritius ; that is, by 
determining the returns obtained at the sugar-mill from the different 
species of canes, as well as the influence produced on the external quali- 
ties and the minute composition of the juice by the force, more or less 1 
greatly employed to produce such pressure. 
I shall then specify the chief physical characteristics which distin- 
guish the cane juice freshly pressed out by the mill, indicating those 
particularities furnished by microscopical examination, and which have 
been considered worthy to engage the future attention of the planter. 
