252 
BEET-BOOT SUGAR. 
as we ought to do when speaking of the produce of the 
wMe island of Cuba, that, in soils of average fertility, the 
caballena (at 13 hectares) yields 1500 arrobas of refined 
sugar (mixed with i/attco and quehraih), or 1330 kilogrammes 
per hectare, it follows that 60,872 hectares, or nineteen 
nve-lourths square sea leagues, (nearly a ninth of the extent 
ot a department of Prance of middling size), suffice to 
produce the 440,000 cases of refined sugar, furnished by 
tile island of Cuba for its own consumption and for lawful 
nd ilbeit exportation. It seems surprising that less than 
twenty scpiare sea leagues should yield an annual produce 
of more than the value of fifty-two millions of franes (count- 
ing one case, at the Ilavanuah, at the rate of twenty-four 
° coarse sugar for the consumption of 
thirty millions of Pronch, (which is actually from fifty-six 
to sixty millions of kilogrammes,) it requires within the 
trojnes, but nine and five-sixths square sea leagues cul- 
tivated with sugar-cane ; and in temperate climates, but 
irty-seyen and a half square sea leagues cultivated with 
beet-root. A hectare of good soil, sown or planted with 
beet-root, produces in Prance from ten to thirty thousand 
kdogrammes of beet-root. The mean fertility is 20 000 
k; ogrammes, wPich furnish 2J- per cent., or five himdred 
kilogrammes of coarse sugar. jSTow, one hundred kilo- 
grammes of that sugar yield fifty kilogrammes of refined 
sugar, thirty of sugar mycowe, and twenty of wiMscore* ; 
consequently, a hectare of beet-root produces 250 kilo- 
grammes of refined sugar. 
A short time before my arrival at the Havannah, there 
had been sent from Germany some specimens of beet-root 
sugar, which were said “to menace the existence of the 
bugar Islands in America.” The planters had learned wdth 
alarm that it was a substance entirely similar to sugar-cane, 
but they flattered themselves that the high price of labour in 
ur^e, and the difficulty of separatuig the sugar fit for 
crystallization from so great a mass of vegetable pulp, would 
render the operation on a grand scale little profitable. 
Chemistry has, since tliat period, succeeded in overcoming 
those difficulties ; and, in the year 1812, Prance alone had 
more than two hundred beet-root sugar factories work- 
ing with very unequal success, and producing a mfiliou 
