I9O TlMEHRl. 
Mr. Russell asked if they made any rum. 
Mr. Blake said they made 15 gallons of rum to the 
ton of sugar, and the rum was included in the calcula- 
tions he had given. 
Mr. Russell said that what had fallen from Mr. Blake 
entirely confirmed what he had laid down in his paper, 
viz., that with an expression of anything above 70 per 
cent, of juice it would be advisable to burn green 
megass ; but with anything below 70 it would be a 
positive waste of fuel. He was glad to hear they were 
doing so well at the Central Factory, as to be able to 
make a ton of sugar with only 5 cwt. coal. But, of 
course, they did not know the consistency of the canes, — 
how much was woody fibre, or what amount of sugar it 
contained ; and those were very important elements in 
the calculation. 
Mr. Shields' paper, closing the discussion, was to the 
following effe6t : — 
In the paper which Mr. Russell laid before your meeting of the 10th 
January, he criticises my remarks made at a former meeting, I think 
rather unjustly. While I do not in any way object to criticism, it is but 
fair to ask that the person who takes that in hand should carefully read 
and justly interpret the remarks made in the paper he attempts to 
criticise. If Mr. Russell will do this, he will find that I never said 
that cylinder enlargement alone is the one thing necessary, " that I do 
not make a mistake," and assume that a certain percentage recovered 
was all gain from an l.s.d. point of view. 
Strange as it may seem, Mr. Russell also accuses himself unjustly. If 
he will turn up the passage referred to in " Sugar growing and Refining," 
he will see that he did not make the mistake he takes credit for. Instead 
of over-estimating, I find from the table by J. Owen Alexander that I 
have under-estimated the loss due to the imperfect crushing by ioo per 
cent. In my paper I assumed that 63 per cent was the average crushing 
and that it was possible to obtain 70 per cent. Mr. Alexander shows 
that 77'07 per cent is actually obtained from the canes at Providence, 
