359 
sufeMn* 
The History of Sugar and S ugar- Yielding Plants ; together 
with an Epitome op every notable process op Sugar Ex- 
traction from the Earliest Times to the Present. By 
William Reed. Longman and Co. 1866. 
Though a small, this is an exceedingly useful and comprehensive 
volume on an important subject, and one which is daily assuming a 
more decided interest for the general public Mr. Reed has been for 
many years connected with the sugar trade, and is well known as the 
proprietor of the ' Grocer ' This circumstance has given him more 
than ordinary facilities in the treatment of such a subject, which re- 
quires considerable special knowledge. The statistics which accompany 
the volume, and which form an important as well as a very interesting 
portion of it, are arranged with great exactness, a matter not generally 
attended to by those who are forced to wander through the difficult 
mazes of Parliamentary Blue Books and similar documents. The volume 
is divided into eleven chapters ; the first contains a history of sugar in- 
troduction into various countries, with notes on important patents for 
manufacturing purposes. The second chapter contains ample details on 
the principal sources of sugar supply, and the imports of raw and re- 
fined sugar from various countries for the last twenty years. The other 
chapters treat of the culture and variety of the sugar cane ; the manu- 
facture of raw sugar ; the growth and manufacture of date, beet, and 
maple sugars ; the manufacture of refined sugar in England ; the prices 
of sugar from 1319 to 1864 ; the use and treatment of animal charcoal ; 
English and foreign duties, and the consumption of sugar in the United 
Kingdom and in other countries. 
All these topics are treated with precision and knowledge of the 
subject ; and those who remember the angry and oftentimes illogical 
controversy whi^h was carried on a few years ago, and which terminated 
in Mr. Gladstone's reduction of the duly in 1864, will indeed wish that 
such a compendious manual of sugar statistics had been in the hands of 
the public, who are so considerably interested in this question as con- 
sumers, and who are so often forgotten by statesmen in their seemingly 
well-arranged schemes. At that time beet sugar was not the formidable 
rival of cane sugar which it has since become, a rivalry which was 
ignored in Mr. Gladstone's compensation budget of 1864, but which, if 
the present anomalous differential duties are not changed, will have a 
fatal effect on the West Indies particularly, as well as on the other 
sugar-producing colonies, which will have to struggle against a fiscal in- 
justice worse than any protection could be. 
But as the Technologist is not the fitting arena of such a discus- 
sion as this, it will be simply necessary to remark that such chapters as 
VOL. VI. P P 
