146 TlMEHRI. 
amount of sugar, organic matter and salts in the soluble 
portion, was then calculated out in accordance with the 
relative quantities in which they were found in the juice, 
and thus the analysis of the cane was effected. 
Peligot, a Parisian professor of chemistry, per- 
formed his analyses only on dried cane and preserved 
juice that had been sent to him at Paris from Marti- 
nique and Guadeloupe. Dupuy, a French naval apothe- 
cary, Casaseca, Professor of Chemistry at the Univer- 
sity of Havana, and Avequin, a pharmaceutist of New 
Orleans, each made theirs on fresh cane at the place of 
growth ; but the analyses were all made in a similar 
way. So rough was the method employed, that the pre- 
sence of glucose (or molasses as it was called) was not 
only overlooked but its existence actually denied, except 
by Avequin, whose results, however, obtained at a much 
earlier date, were eclipsed by those of Peligot and 
Dupuy. Not until Dr. leery investigated the point, by 
improved methods and appliances, was glucose recog- 
nised as a constant constituent of cane. 
It is impossible to regard these analyses as correctly 
representing the composition of cane, and absurd to 
retain them in the books of the present day, when both 
cane sugar and glucose can be accurately determined to 
a small fraction of one per cent. 
In 1883 I analysed a number of canes from the Botan- 
ical Gardens here, and from a certain disproportion 
existing between the amount of sugar in the plant and 
its juice, I formed the conviction that the percentage of 
sugar usually said to be present in the cane, was greatly 
overstated— instead of 18 to 20 per cent., 12 to 14 per 
cent, seemed to be nearer the truth for ordinary canes, 
