The cultivation of the Sugar Cane differs in one respect from that of the other staples we have been accustomed to raise. Its preliminary expense is greater, and must be incurred even before it can be ascertained that the investment will be profitable. This, perhaps, more than any other cause, has prevented this plant from having already become an article of common occurrence in our fields. If any one commences the planting of cotton as a new crop, he is not obliged to advance even the small cost of gins and gin-houses immediately, he can sell his cotton in the seed, have it cleaned on toll, or can keep it without injury until it shall be convenient to prepare it himself for market. If he cultivates rice, he can send it to be beat on toll, without involving himself in the heavy expense of mills, or can sell it as rough rice. But no such resource awaits the cultivators of sugar. No public toll, no mills are established in the country to grind and manufacture the cane. None will be established, for the season for manufacturing is short; every one would press his crop to the mills at the same moment, no one would wait, knowing that his cane will perish if not immediately prepared for market. Every planter must have his machinery ready by the time his cane is ripe, or his crop for that season will be lost. Now, as this machinery is expensive-a good mill, with its necessary appurtenances and buildings, costing not less than eight thousand dollars-the prudent and cautious will not embark in such an experiment, until by the experience of the adventurous, they conceive themselves assured of ultimate success. Hence has arisen so much vacillation on this subject. It is true that mills can be erected for a sum less than the one we have stated, but they will be imperfect, too weak to grind mature cane rapidly and effectually; they will, consequently, lose much time, cause much waste, extract less sugar than might be procured from the cane, and frequently by delay, deteriorate the quality of that which is obtained. Experience, we suspect, will prove that the cheap mills are not economical. Every one who will reflect must perceive, that in an operation like the manufacture of sugar, it is important not only that the operations should be expeditious in order that a fluid so much disposed to ferment as the juice of the sugar cane, should be conveyed to the boilers without delay, but that the machinery should be sufficiently powerful to express the juice thoroughly; otherwise a portion, and that, perhaps, the portion most abounding in sacharine matter, may be left in the cane, and that which is expressed for the boilers, be not only diminished in quantity, but materially injured in quality.

The certainty and necessity of incurring a heavy expense has been one great obstacle to the general and extensive culture of this plant. The difficulty and uncertainty of obtaining an adequate return has been another. It cannot be concealed that from some peculiarity of soil or climate, there has been great difficulty in procuring sugar of a good quality from the cane along the Atlantic border of the Southern States. If a few have succeeded, many have failed. We need not name persons or places-they are generally known. Sugar makers from the Mississippi have been brought to the Alatamaha, and have disappointed their employers; planters from the West Indies have not been more successful. While syrup, molasses, rum, have been produced in great quantities, sugar has been but sparingly obtained, and frequently very inferior in its quality. Hence has arisen a common opinion in the country, that the juice of the cane is too weak to yield sugar advantageously in our climate, or what is perhaps equivalent, that it does not mature.

When a portion of saccharine matter is diffused through any fluid, it would seem to be a very simple operation to separate it by evaporation, or by some equivalent process. This would be the case if the saccharine particles were only diffused in water or in some fluid which formed with them only a mixture, not a chemical compound. But it will happen that in almost all of the combinations which appear to us as simple or common, there are many affinities that are not easily detected nor readily resolved. There are certainly some peculiarities in the juice of the sugar cane in our climate, which render a treatment differing from that employed in Louisiana or the West Indies expedient. Whether these arise from the soil, the shortness of our season, or from other causes, we cannot yet determine. This is one of the cases in which science must be called in to our aid; one of those incidents in which the power of science over the material world, ought to be made manifest. The experience of Mr. Spalding appears to have proven, that cane raised on the light rich lands of the islands, such as is adapted to the sea-island cotton, produces the richest juice, and that from which, under our present system, the sugar can be most easily extracted. But in this soil the crop is liable to suffer from drought, and is frequently very scanty. On the very rich tide lands on the other hand, where the cane grows with prodigious luxuriance and yields much juice, great difficulty has been found in separating the sugar from the feculent matter intermingled with it, and in clarifying it sufficiently for market. In treating this juice by the common process, long boiling is necessary to evaporate the superfluous fluids, and more lime than is com

monly employed has been thought or found necessary to neutralize the acids (acetous, malic, or oxalic), that may be intermingled with the saccharine particles, and to precipitate or coagulate the extraneous matter. Both of these processes injure the quality of the sugar. By long boiling it is frequently burnt; the addition of lime in the least excess, darkens the colour. Hence, the result is frequently a residuum that will not granulate well, or will neither be dry enough nor bright enough to bear any value in market. We appeal to the experience of those who have engaged in this culture for the accuracy of these remarks.

When encountering obstacles of this nature, it will be wise not to confine our views or our processes to the common and familiar practices of our neighbours, but to examine all the resources which other nations engaged in similar pursuits have employed, and call to our aid their experience and their knowledge. We wish not by any observations we have made, to discourage the cultivation of this plant in Georgia and Carolina; on the contrary, we believe confidently that means may and will be devised to surmount the impediments that have hitherto opposed, with us, the successful manufacture of sugar, and to render it one of the staple productions of our country; but we must not be deceived, or suppose that we have no lessons to learn on this subject, and that we are about to engage in a project which has no anxieties.

We shall not at this time occupy much of our attention with the management of the plant itself, To the skill and industry of our planters this may be securely left. On this point we will at present merely remark, that the Sugar Cane although it does not ripen its seed in our climate, is certainly an exhausting crop, and when in the treatises we have read on the culture of this plant in the East and West Indies, we have noticed how much attention is paid to the manuring of land, naturally more fertile than our uplands, and favoured by a tropical atmosphere, we have seen, we must acknowledge, with regret, as leading to disappointment, the extravagant calculations that are made by writers in some of our public prints, of the probable production even of our poorest lands. We look, we must confess, to our lowlands as the only soil in our country calculated for the permanent production of this plant, although by the application of manure it may make a profitable article in any good soil, and alternate advantageously with other crops.

The work which we have prefixed to this article is one of those Manuals which are now published in Paris on every important VOL III.-No. 6.

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branch of science or of art. Although drawn up in a cheap and popular form, they generally embrace the latest improvements in each department, and are frequently edited by men distinguished in the literary world. The one before us contains not only a brief account of the cultivation of the Sugar Cane, and the processes by which sugar is extracted from its juice, but accurate details also of the treatment necessary to procure sugar from the juice of the maple and the beet. It is the latter portion of its contents that has rendered this work interesting to us. To the culture and manufacture of the beet, much attention is still paid on the continent of Europe, and from the manipulations introduced for separating sugar from the crude and comparatively weak juice of this vegetable, some hints may be derived, useful to us in the important experiment in which we are about to embark.

We shall briefly review the processes which our authors recommend in the manufacture of sugar, in the first instance from the juice of the cane-in the next place, from that of the beet, and will notice the peculiarities and improvements that appear to be worthy of attention. The objects of the work are thus stated :—

"The methods to be pursued in the culture of the plants which furnish sugar, the processes employed to extract it from them, and to refine it, have been the objects of the researches of a great number of authors. The labours of Messrs. De Caseaux and Dutrone upon the Sugar Cane, those of Messrs. Achard, Chaptal and Mathieu de Dombasle, upon the beet, bold incontestibly the highest rank, and these writers serve as guides to the cultivators and refiners.

"After the works of these learned men, we may still cite many memoirs on the fabrication and the refining of sugar, which are not destitute of merit. Unfortunately these memoirs are scattered through works voluminous or little known, which planters or refiners have little leisure to consult. They, therefore, sometimes remain ignorant of the ameliorations introduced into their art, because they are not found in works of general reference.

"These authors have, on the other hand, only written each on a special subject, and no one has traced the steps to be pursued in the culture of all the plants which produce sugar, the different processes to be adopted for its extraction, according to the plants from which it is to be derived, the operations for refining it, or the changes which these processes have undergone in latter years.

"We have, therefore, undertaken to reunite all of these labours, to compare them together, and to present them under a form at once convenient and cheap." p. v.

The first portion of this Manual is devoted to the Sugar Cane. We shall not follow our authors into their preliminary discus

sions on the nature of sugar, or their chemical details, excepting so far as these may influence the operations of the manufacturer.*

The Sugar Cane is one of the many luxuries for which the world is indebted to India. It is supposed now to grow spontaneously along some of the rivers of that country and of Persia, but where it has so long existed in a cultivated state, it is not easy to determine whether it is strictly indigenous. From old drawings of the Chinese, Humboldt infers that the manufacture of sugar has been known in that country from a high antiquity, perhaps from time immemorial. From the Persians it was communicated to the Greeks and Romans, but to them it was only known as a medicine, not as a condiment, and perhaps was only seen in its impure or unrefined state, although the expression of Paul Æginetus "sal Indicus, colore quidem concretioneque, vulgari sali similis, gustu autem et sapore melleus" would seem to indicate that it had been seen in Europe in its purified form. By the Saracens, the plant itself was transported to Cyprus, Sicily and Spain; from thence, it was carried to Madeira and the Cape de Verd Islands, and in these delightful climes, the Fortunate Islands of antiquity, it flourished so well, that Europe was supplied from them during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, with the greater part of the sugar which, in those simple and frugal days, it consumed. In the first voyages of Columbus it was brought to the western hemisphere, and disseminated so speedily throughout the islands and coasts within the tropics, as to have rendered it now doubtful whether it was not also a native of this continent. It is scarcely necessary to add, that it has long since become the most important article of culture in tropical America; and, that its production in these fruitful soils has been so immense, that Europe is now supplied almost exclusively from this continent, and sugar which was once administered to the sick in grains or drams as a delicious and salutary balsam, is now become a daily, almost a necessary article of domestic consumption throughout the civilized world.

In this view, the following facts may merit notice-" Solutions of sugar exposed during a long time to a temperature of sixty or eighty degrees of the Centigrade thermometer, (140 to 176 Fahr.) become coloured, and the sugar that they contain loses the property of cristallization.

"Alkalies, such as lime, potash, barytes, &c. mingled in solutions of sugar combine with it, without alteration. These compounds, of a taste bitter and astringent, cannot be cristallized-acids, by disengaging these bases, restore to the sugar of these solutions its primitive qualities. Experiments have shewn, that if a combination, such as we have described. with lime, is left undisturbed for some months, it deposits, first, carbonate of lime in acute rhomboids, and afterwards the sugar is decomposed and transformed into a mucilaginous substance." p. 5.