186 PROCEEDINGS OF THE SCIENTIFIC ASSOCIATION'. 
and the slices of cane in the first basket were proportion- 
ately exhausted. This was virtually the old system of Du- 
bunfaut with its defects, viz. : that the water was not easily 
kept at a suitable temperature ; that the whole sugar was 
not extracted ; and that, from the time which elapsed be- 
tween slicing and exhaustion, considerable changes occurred 
in the saccharine fluid which affected the quantity and qua^ 
lity of the result. These defects, in principle, did not, how- 
ever, of themselves, contribute much to the failure of the 
plan ; the system broke down in the subsequent evapora- 
tion, in which the heat employed was generated entirely 
from gas manufactured on the spot — an operation attended 
with such difficulties that the trials were given up after 
heavy outlay. This was much to be regretted, as the slic- 
ing process had shown that a much larger proportion of the 
sweets could be extracted from the cane than had been 
hitherto done in any other mode, for even the five-roller 
mills which had been started with sanguine hopes, during 
the preceding two years, had been successively abandoned. 
A system so simple and yet promising such complete re- 
sults was not destined to disappear without traces. In 
September, 1847, Mr. Davies, Apothecary in Chief to the 
French service at Basseterre, resumed the experiments of 
slicing and drying the canes, at the point where they had 
been left off in 1845. He found that by driving off about 
33 per cent, of moisture from sliced canes, they became so 
friable as to be reduced, without difficulty, to a course pow- 
der in which the coloring matter and supposed albumenoid 
principles of the cane had become insoluble in water, while 
the saccharine elements were crystallized unchanged and 
ready for immediate solution and extraction by water, either 
