*4 TlMEHRI. 
I dare not enter into the relative merits of the various 
kind of multiple effects ; they are, all of them, improve- 
ments introduced daring the last twenty years. Every 
one firmly believes in the apparatus that he is used to. 
We have all our own peculiar fancy, and our doxy is ortho- 
doxy, and every one else's doxy is heterodoxy. 
Anyway, they are all much better than the old copper 
walls, and so may be classed among the improvements of 
the last twenty years. 
We now come to the vacuum pans. There is no great 
improvement here. The machine is not now regarded 
with the same awe as it used to be. Twenty years ago 
the pan boiler was a sort of 'boss conjurer'. He alone 
knew all the marvellous secrets that were 'into' the 
proof stick. The old time planters knew very little of 
modern methods. I knew a proprietor, but I am glad to 
say not of British Guiana, who thought that Litmus 
papers were some essays written by a Mr. LlTMUS on the 
subje6l of clarification. In the vacuum pans the syrup is 
boiled into masse-cuite, this is 'struck' into coolers, which 
were, twenty years ago, always very large. I am sure I do 
not know why, but they always were very large, and no one 
ever thought of making them otherwise. A half naked 
labourer used to stand up to his middle in them and dig out 
their contents, with great expenditure of strength &c. 
The &c, used to go, eventually, into the rum, I suppose. 
Now, many estates have very small coolers. So small 
that they are called by the people ' sugar cans' from their 
resemblance to the tins containing salmon &c. These 
cans hold about 500 lbs. of masse-cuite each, and they are 
very easily handled and transported. They are lifted up 
by a table rising on a hydraulic ram, they are turned up- 
