t)EMERARA SUGAR PRODUCTION. 
extravagance. We all know that steam is fuel, and fuel 
is money. It is now universally acknowledged that the 
higher the initial pressure, the greater is the economy 
provided always that every atom of steam that passes 
from an engine is used for heating purposes. 
However, the relative merits of different engines is 
not so much a sugar maker's question as an engineer's. 
So let us pass to the mill. 
There are still very many mills at work in this colony 
that were working twenty years ago, but they do very 
different work. Crushing that would have been con- 
sidered very creditable at that time, would not be tolerated 
now, and many mills that are tolerated now are a con- 
stant grief to the sugar maker, and it is only the want of 
the capital necessary to put up a new crushing plant that 
keeps many a Demerara mill from the l scrap heap' in 
the yard. 
The difference between 65 and 70 per cent, is a 
thirteenth of the whole; that is, an estate making 1,300 
tons of sugar a year with a mill giving 65 per cent, would 
turn out 1,400 if the mill were made to give 70 per cent, 
and the extra hundred tons would be produced almost 
free of cost. 
The first great stir and enquiry into the a6lual and 
possible work of our mills was when Mr. RUSSELL first 
brought out 'maceration;' every body began to weigh 
canes and megass and see what his mill was doing, and 
try what it could be made to do The first result was 
an alarming list of breakages — mill pinions, spur wheels 
and trash turners smashed in every direction; and one of 
the first great improvements in the mills was the almost 
universal adoption of steel gearing. 
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