Report of Society's Meetings. 147 
whilst it appeared probable that the amount in the 
richer kinds, seldom, if ever, exceeded 16 per cent. 
At the meeting of this society held on March 13th of 
this year, Mr. Russell presented an analysis made by 
Mr. Owen Alexander, Chemist at Tuschen, of canes 
from Barbados, which showed them to contain no less 
than 20*23 per cent, of sugar, whilst the juice itself only 
contained 23*05 per cent. These extraordinary results 
caused me to look carefully into the figures, when it 
soon became apparent that the canes had not been 
analysed, but that their assumed composition had been 
merely calculated from data supplied by the analysis of 
the juice, and the amount of fibre in the cane. It fur- 
ther appeared that all the so-called analyses of cane 
emanating from Tuschen, published before and since, 
were made in the same way. The method employed was, 
doubtless, simple and easy, but, unfortunately, is en- 
tirely fallacious, for it assumes that the liquid squeezed 
from the cane is of the same composition as that re- 
maining in the megass ; or to put it more definitely, 
that the juice of the cellular tissue of the cane, which is 
readily obtained by pressure, is the same as the sap in 
the vascular tissue which probably nearly all remains in 
its vessels. In an experiment to ascertain whether juice 
obtained by fractional crushing was homogeneous, I found 
that even the first 30 per cent, was of distinctly greater 
saccharine strength than the second 30 per cent., (20*07 
and 19*59 per cent respectively) ; although the density of 
each was about the same. 
I have no hesitation in stating, that all the " analyses" 
of cane, recently brought forward by Mr. Russell, err 
by showing an excess of sugar varying from 1 to 3 percent- 
T 2 
