420 
RESEARCHES ON THE JUICE OF THE SUGAR CANE IN 
MAURITIUS, AND THE MODIFICATIONS IT UNDERGOES 
DURING MANUFACTURE. 
BY DR. ICERT. 
President of the Chamber of Agriculture. 
Translated by James Morris, Esq., Representative of the Chamber of Agriculture 
of Mauritius. 
(Continued from page 869.) 
In all my researches in order to determine the amount of saccharine 
matter in the sugar cane, I have always used simultaneously the optical 
analysis and the chemical tests generally employed. The agreement in 
the indications furnished in certain cases by this double method, as well 
the disagreement in other instance?, have led me to conclusions ex- 
tremely interesting, not only in a scientific, but also in a practical point 
of view. 
I will not go into the details of the numerous experiments I have made 
on this subject ; the table and its explanations, which I have already 
given summarize, as it were, a great number of such experiments. 
It will be sufficient for me here to formulate the results obtained, the 
exactness of which can easily be verified. 
1. When the cane, whatever may be its variety or the soil on which 
it has grown, reaches perfect maturity after a normal growth, the period 
at which it ceases to increase and when its constituent parts seem to 
experience neither gain nor loss — a period easily distinguished by the 
planter, — it contains almost entirely crystallizable prismatic sugar 
throughout the whole of that portion called the body of the cane, which 
stretches from the first knots of the root to those immediately situated 
under the green leaves still attached to the stem. The quantity of 
interverted sugar which the cane-juice then yields is always very small, 
and rarely exceeds the four- thousandth part of the weight of such juice, 
or the one-fiftieth part of that of prismatic sugar. Under the most favour- 
able conditions, I have ordinarily found it to be the one-seventyfifth 
part. Thus the optical process, in such cases, furnishes directly, and 
after the inversion of the juice, notations which, for a determinate 
temperature, being referred to the rotatory powers of crystallizable sugar 
and of levulose, are generally similar, or only in the slightest degree 
dissimilar. 
This quantity of uncrystallizable sugar, small though it be, is variable 
yet constant, when the examination is made of the juice from the entire 
portion of the cane. It increases in a marked manner when the juice 
is extracted from that portion between the knots of the cane nearest the 
top, and diminishes from this part to the middle of the body of the Cane, 
where it is generally inappreciable. 
2. If instead of examining the body of the cane, the examination be 
