200 PROCEEDINGS OF THE SCIENTIFIC ASSOCIATION. 
tons, for the crop 1878-79 ; and is estimated by Mr. Licht 
to be 1,625,000 tons for the crop 1880-81, out of which 
Germany produced about 550,000 tons ; France, 830,000 
tons ; Austria-Hungary, 450,000 tons ; Russia, 200,000 tons. 
Germany consequently occupies now the first rank in beet- 
sugar industry, as regards the quantity produced, and the high- 
est return of sugar obtained from the raw material. Nothing 
shows better the superiority of a method of manufacture 
than a comparison of the figures obtained in practice. I 
quote from personal experience the results obtained in a 
German beet-sugar factory in the crop> 1878-79. One will 
find them better than those of the cane-sugar usines (with 
very few exceptions), notwithstanding the greater richness 
of cane-juice in saccharine matter. This German usine was 
founded on shares, with a capital of £50,000, with a capacity 
to work up two hundred tons of beetroots in twenty-four 
hours. The juice was extracted out of the sliced beets by 
“diffusion” in such a complete manner that the residues 
showed only fourth-tenths per cent, of saccharine matter ; a 
great difference with the megass of the cane, where 10, even 
15, per cent, of sugar is left ! 
Diffusion means the systematical exhaustion of the thinly 
sliced beets in a diffusion battery, composed of eight to ten 
iron vessels, with water under action of heat. This process 
used now in 85 per cent, of the German and Austrian 
factories, and beginning to extend in France, has perhaps a 
high future in the manufacture of cane-sugar. Certainly the 
higher return in sugar would balance the increased con- 
sumption of fuel required to evaporate the water added, 
besides the difficulty to slice the cane thin enough and to 
dry the wet megass again. 
