Report of Society's Meetings. 
149 
that little understood and much misrepresented plant, 
the sugar-cane. 
A point of great importance in determining the 
amount of sugar in cane, is to perform the analysis as 
soon after cutting as possible, or at all events, to accu- 
rately weigh the canes, so that the necessary correction 
may be made for the loss of moisture they suffer on 
being kept. Freshly cut canes lose weight at first very 
rapidly, but after one or two days they seem to settle 
down to a fairly uniform loss of about one per cent, a 
day. Unless such a correction is made, it will be evi- 
dent that canes, imported from the islands for instance, 
which are not analysed for perhaps a week after cutting, 
will show a very different percentage of sugar to that 
originally present in them. The following determina- 
tions show the amount of loss experienced by somewhat 
dry canes. 
Number of 
Canes. 
Weight in 
kilograms. 
Time of 
keeping. 
Loss of 
moisture 
grams. 
Average 
per cent. 
daily loss. 
Per cent, 
total loss. 
3-646 
1 hour 
5 
3-29 
•14 
11 
15*998 
19 hours 
233 
r8 3 
i'45 
1-625 
1 day. 
25 
1-53 
i'53 
1-760 
I u 
36 
2-05 
2-05 
1-625 
2 days. 
42 
1*29 
2-58 
1-760 
2 ,, 
62 
176 
3'52 
6 
16-095 
4 11 
688 
I'02 
4-27 
16-25 
7 II 
102 
089 
6-27 
1-760 
7 11 
147 
1-19 
8'35 
4-302 
8 „ 
324 
0-94 
7'53 
3'9 8 3 
8 „ 
3i9 
1 -oo 
8-oo 
3-120 
30 ,, 
834 
78 
26-73 
1 
3-024 
30 „ 
711 
•78 
23-51 
