Report of Society's Meetings. 325 
began to try what was afterwards known as maceration, 
i. e., saturating the megass with low pressure steam and 
water before second crushing, to the extent of reducing 
the second juice to half the richness of that extracted by 
the first mill, 7*5 per cent, sugar in second juice. What 
between the boiling water and the action of the steam in 
softening the fibre, the second crushing rose from the 
fibre carrying away double its own weight of original 
cane juice, viz. 70 per cent, crushing to only carrying 
away its own weight of second juice, raising the crushing 
to 80 per cent, and as the loin's, reduced cane juice only 
carried away 7-5 per cent, of sugar, then the only 
apparent loss on 100 lbs. canes was reduced to three 
quarters of a pound of sugar. Full tabulated statements 
of these trials are set forth in the late work published by 
Lock, Wigner, and Harland, pages, 153-160. 
These experiments led up to machinery suitable for 
the double operation to be carried on simultaneously. 
A full description of the work as done at " Providence" 
is given in the paper which I prepared for this Society 
and published in Timehri, vol. iii. part 1, page 61. In 
that paper it will be found that the fibre had risen to 1 1*4 
per cent, and the cane 13*37 P er cen t- of sugar. 
In the latest paper that I have contributed on sugar 
after inspecting the beet factories, I put the sugar in 112 
lbs. (a cwt.) of canes at 14*78 ; deduct 12 per cent, and we 
have 13 per cent, of sugar in the cane. Few believed but 
what I had under-estimated the sugar in our cane, where- 
as I over estimated it to a considerable extent, as now 
set forth by our chemists. 
Wood in the Cane. — In all calculations as to results of 
crushing this is an all-important factor to be considered, 
