68 TlMEHRI. 
conditions ; no doubt different estates vary. It will in 
any case I fancy be very difficult to show that diffusion 
will entail a loss. 
Then why has not diffusion, if its advantages are so 
manifest and so great, established itself long ago ? Why 
so many failures? Let us see what some of these fail- 
ures consisted in. 
In the first attempt made in 1843, the cane slices were 
dried and powdered, the intention being to ship them in 
this condition to Europe, there to have the sugar ex- 
tracted by diffusion. It was found however that the 
sugar could not survive the voyage, and the enterprise 
came to an end. An attempt was then made to extract 
the sugar on the spot, which was frustrated by the burn- 
ing of the building erected for the purpose. 
Again in 1845 did this unfortunate process come to 
grief through no fault of its own ; the heat employed in 
the evaporation being generated from gas manufactured 
on the spot ; a system which broke down in practice. 
Once more when in 1847 the process was about to 
be undertaken with every prospect of success on King 
LOUIS Philippe's estate in Martinique, the outbreak of 
the French Revolution caused the operations to be dis- 
continued. 
Now as regards those cases where the cutting ma- 
chinery failed, it must be remembered that it always 
started well, but it seems to have been unable to cope 
with the quantity of cane, to do its work fast enough in 
fact. Must not this have arisen from an under-estimate 
of the difficulty of cutting the cane on the part of the 
makers? We know that the besetting sin of machine 
manufacturers is to overrate the capacity of their ma- 
