364 WISCONSIN STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
and removed from the syrup with great difficulty. Lime also 
unites with fibrine, casein, albumen and gum, and renders them 
permanently soluble, while it precipitates starch alone. 
Nature has shown us that we can convert fibrine, starch, cane 
sugar, gum, grape sugar and alcohol into acetic acid, or into 
each other in the order named, yet the order cannot be reversed. 
The change requires but an almost imperceptible decrease of 
carbon. They all act upon lime in the nature of an acid, and 
with it form different salts. There is another quality of quick 
lime which must not be forgotten, and which injures sugar. It 
is never found in nature, but is always combined with acid. If 
that acid be driven off, it will supply itself with the same, or 
seek another. If we examine this action of lime on sugar, we 
shall be startled at the result. 
/ 
The formula of sugar was C 11, II 11, 0 11, or more exact¬ 
ly, carbon 42.48, and the elements of water 57.53; and of gum 
it is carbon 42.23, water 57.77; so that if there be extracted 
from 100 grains of sugar 24-100th of a grain of carbon, and 
14-100th of a grain of water be added, the result will be the 100 
grains of sugar will be converted into gum. Now suppose 1000 
grains of lime remain in the solution of cane juice, after boiling 
and filteration; those 1000 grains of lime will require 761 grains 
of carbonic acid to convert them into carbonate of lime or chalk. 
This carbonic acid consists of 210 grains of carbon, and 552 
grains of oxygen. The carbon must be extracted from the su¬ 
gar, as there is no other body from which it can come. But if 
100 grains of sugar cannot part with 24-100ths of a grain of 
carbon before it is converted into gum, the abstraction of the 
210 grains of carbon will be sufficient to change 87,500 grains, 
or 15 pounds of sugar into gum. This result will not happen, 
as the lime will change a portion of the sugar into glucic and 
and melassic acids, and then unite with them, and thus destroy 
a less quantity. Here in one considerable cause of the forma¬ 
tion of molasses. 
The use of quick lime not only produces a loss of sugar as 
we have just shown, but the greater the quantity of lime in the 
