242 
STATE AGEICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
presses—mechanical and hydraulic—-boilers of defecation, 
carbonic-acid boilers, carbonic-acid generators, loam presses, 
animal charcoal Biters, machines for concentrating and cooking 
the sugar, crystallizing vats, turbines and furnaces for revivi¬ 
fying the animal charcoal. To this must be added the engines 
and generators, the size and cost of which depend necessarily 
upon the extent of the factory. 
Of the improvements which have been made of late years 
in the methods and processes of manufacturing sugar, M. Con¬ 
stant Say makes the following observations : 
“Since 1857 the manufacture and refining of sugar has made great pro¬ 
gress, the result of which is the production of sugar at a lower cost than for¬ 
merly. The principal improvements in the manufacture are in the process of 
double carbonation, the apparatus of triple effect, of roasting in vacuo, and 
the use of centrifugal m.achines. ” 
The Diffusion Process. —Mr. Post, consul of the United States 
at Vienna, Austria, writes as follows concerning the new diffu¬ 
sion process: 
“The new process recently invented by Mr. Julius Robert, a sugar manu¬ 
facturer of Seelowitz, Austria, is working a complete change in the manu¬ 
factories here, and will doubtless exert a great kifiuence on an extended in¬ 
troduction into the United States, and it is adapted to extracting the crystal¬ 
line sugar from either sugar cane or beet root. 
“Without entering into an extended description of ihis invention I may 
say that the process differs radically from the old methods, their leading prin¬ 
ciple being to obtain the juice contained in the cane or beet root, and 
to this end they employed repeated grinding, or maceration, or powerful 
pressure. 
“Mr. Roberts’s diffusion process’ does not aim at obtaining the juice con¬ 
tained in the cells of the cane or beet root, but to extract only the crystalli- 
zable sugar contained in that juice, and to leave whatever else it contains 
in the cells. To accomplish this purpose, the sugar cane or beet roots are 
cut into small slices and put into a number of vats, which are connected by 
pipes running from the bottom of one vat to the top of the next succeeding. 
Water of a certain temperature, and of a ^quantity proportioned to the 
weight of the cane or beet roots in the vats, is mixed with the material in 
the first vat, and allowed to remain until it takes up a portion of the saccha¬ 
rine matter, or, so to speak, until the sugar in the vat is equalized between 
the water and the c&ne or beet root. That is to say, if the beet root contains 
eight per cent, of saccharine matter, the water will take up four per cent. 
This water is then forced by hydraulic pressure into the second vat, filled 
with beets. 
