be if they presented greater surface to the agency of the solventotherwise the loss attendant on this most improper operation would be greatly augmented. The final result of this rude process of liquoring is, a large-grained dusky yellow sugar, now generally used for the purpose of sweetening coffee. Considered in the abstract, without reference to the steps by which it was obtained, this sugar might be taken as a proof of the benefits of colonial vacuum-pan boiling; and hence, from want of a fuller acquaintance with the subject, the most erroneous notions have been disseminated.

The rude process of liquoring by water, already described, is not invariably followed, it is true, in the colonies; sometimes a portion of juice, defecated and evaporated, to a certain extent, is substituted. Occasionally, too, the refinery process of making pure magma liquor has been adopted, but still under circumstances involving the greatest improprieties.

The propriety or impropriety of the claying and liquoring operations, in the colonies, can only be correctly judged of by reference to the precise end desired to be achieved. Thus it is possible to conceive a manufacture injured, even to ruin, by instituting false comparisons between it and another, and by the introduction of appliances, admirably adapted to the former case, but adverse to the latter. The colonial application of the process of liquoring, even when well managed, is emphatically open to the remarks just made. The refiner's object is to procure a white sugar, and the process of liquoring is absolutely necessary to give him this; therefore, cost what it may, the operation must be followed. The object of the colonial sugarmaker, however, is, and has been, to obtain a yellow coloured sugar; a staple which may be made in the greatest perfection of tint without the employment of any claying or liquoring process whatever; without charcoal, alumina, or lime; as will be hereafter demonstrated. True it is, that if the cane juice be boiled too high, especially if in contact with lime, and other impurities, the process of liquoring will be required to remove such a portion of them, that the resulting sugar shall have a marketable colour. But the contemplation of this fact brings us back again to the conclusion already arrived at :That no secondary appliances-not even the vacuum-pan-can accomplish any great amelioration of the sugar produce, whilst made to operate upon an impure juice.

UNDER the definition Claying, has been given a condensed account of the colonial process of claying. It is necessary now to contemplate it a little more narrowly in detail. The operation is more particularly followed by the Spanish and Portuguese colonies; and in a modified form also by the natives of Hindostan.

The general manner of conducting the operation is as follows:Instead of putting the sugar to be drained into casks, it is placed in large earthenware or iron cones, after the method of refineries, and the green syrup is allowed to percolate away.

At this period, a magma or pap of white clay and water is superimposed; the agency of which is, manifestly-to wash away a portion

of the chemical coloring impurities existent in the yellow sugar. The operation of claying is repeated twice or thrice, each coat of clay as it dries being removed, and another substituted in its place.

This claying operation is a most extravagant one; involving the loss of a third part of the original contents of the cone; and producing, after all, a sugar which, even at the base of the cones, or nearest to the clay, is far from white.

It has already been remarked, that in India a modified process of claying is pursued. An equivalent process would be a more correct expression; but not to discuss one principle under many heads, the term claying may be retained to express the Indian operation.

Instead of using clay, or a magma of sugar and water termed clay by the English refiners, the Hindoos generally attain the end of washing their raw sugar partially white, by superimposing on the base of the conical contents masses of hygrometric weeds or damp cloths; the effect of either being-the gradual liberation of water, and, consequently, the partial removal of chemical coloring impurities.

By following the processes of claying or liquoring, under almost any of their modifications, the darkest sugars may be made comparatively light colored; and thus may be made to yield a product capable of misleading the unwary.

Thus it often happens that samples of light colored sugars are dis* played, and appealed to, as triumphs of some new method of sugar manufacture, the only beauty of such sugars being such as is derived from the claying or liquoring processes; and which sugars, before the application of these processes, might have been almost black. This mode of displaying sugars is a piece of charlatanry which cannot be too severely reprobated. There is another, scarcely more defensible, namely, the display of large crystals or grains, which every chemist knows any sample of cane sugar can be made to assume, by mere devices of evaporation and cooling.

It cannot, however, be a matter of wonder, that the latter deceit should be largely practised, when it is considered that the sugar community has elevated the question of grain into a most unsafe position; and has made it a false criterion of qualities with which it has no connexion whatever.

The sugar broker, or refiner, attaches great importance to the touch which certain sugars impart when pressed, or rubbed between the finger and thumb; and accordingly as it feels soft or hard, it is pronounced weak or strong:-this criterion, like many others which have been misapplied, is, within proper limits, safe and good ;-without those limits, productive of serious errors.

The first body into which sugar becomes changed, in the downward series of destructive metamorphoses, is glucose or grape sugar; which, if present in any considerable quantity, is most inimical to the formation of large crystals; it moreover imparts to the mass a condition of clammy pastiness. Under these circumstances, the sense of touch would be a very safe guide to the purchaser of raw sugar; who would be acting consistently in repudiating all sugars possess

ing small grain, from this cause. But the rule may be extended to the furthest limits of falsehood; even to the absurdity of pronouncing refined sugar in powder-weak, but the same sugar in the lumpstrong.

Having discussed the fallacy of being guided implicitly by the sense of touch, it remains to show the fallacies attendant on the sense of taste.

Nothing is more common than the affirmation, that one certain sugar has more sweetness than another, or that it possesses more saccharine matter; and, to place the affirmation in its most absurd light, the amount of sweetness or saccharine matter is made to decrease in proportion to the purity of the sugar. Thus, it is a very common affirmation, that white sugar does not sweeten so well as yellow sugar; in other words, that pure sugar does not sweeten so well as that which is impure:-because the former has less saccharine matter than the latter! Such is the common assertion :-one that may be heard very widely disseminated indeed-from the cook in our own kitchens, to the brokers in Mincing Lane; and, strange to say, in refineries too. Once admit the assertion to be valid, and to what a chaos of absurdity are we led. The whole system of sugar refining, with all its costliness, all its complexity, all its experience, is prosecuted-for what? To render sugar less saccharine,-to effect a destruction! Such is the necessary conclusion.

To explain these discrepancies between language and facts, is not so difficult as it may at first seem,-they originate in the use of lax expressions, based upon the evidence of the most fallacious of all our senses- -the sense of taste.

It is a fact very well known to physiologists, that when certain tastes of different kinds and of different amounts of intensity are combined, so that they affect the gustatory organs at once, the judgment, although unable to discriminate between them, and forming a conception alone of that taste which is most familiar, or most predominant as to kind; nevertheless as to the qualities of strength or pungency, the judgment conveys a mixed idea of both. Or when two bodies are mixed,-one alone of which has a taste,―(practically or absolutely) the effect of the tasteless body is often confounded with the effect of the other.

The above is not a mere fine-wrought philosophical deduction; but one which has been applied to practice, and its truth demonstrated in many ways. Thus the dishonest tavern-keeper adulterates his spirit, particularly gin, with tincture of capsicum, and his beer with coccu lus indicus-in either case to impart a fictitious alcoholic strength. The most untutored palate would distinguish between the taste of gin, and of cayenne pepper, alone: but, when mixed in certain proportions, the pungency imparted by the latter to the gustatory organs is recognized, but not discriminated-both together conveying the vague idea of strength.

As to cocculus indicus, it is devoid of pungency, but is a narcotic; nevertheless, the judgment is equally deceived as in the former

case.

Again, to take another instance, there are few snuff-takers with nasal organs so obtuse, as to be incapable of distinguishing lime, powdered glass, extract of logwood, sand, sal-ammoniac, or smelling salts, from the powder of tobacco. Yet in the form of snuff the nose is continually deceived. All these foreign bodies may be and frequently are mixed with snuff to give it a pungency; each agent conveys an impression, but loses its individuality-the idea of tobacco preponderates over all the rest.

Thus is it with impure or colored sugars, which consist of sugar, plus many foreign bodies, each possessing its own abstract individual taste;-conveying when alone a notion both of kind and degree ;— but when in conjunction-only the latter: which goes to augment the predominant idea of sweetness, conveyed by the most familiar, most prevailing substance of the mixture-sugar.

Here is a fruitful source of the fallacy adverted to; but there is another. The idea of sweetness, as conveyed by sugars equally pure, varies in direct ratio to the amount of comminution: Hence large-grained sugars seem to be less sweet than those the grains of which are small. The reason of this will be evident, when it is considered that all substances which are insoluble in the saliva are totally devoid of taste, and that the taste of all other substances is in direct ratio to the rapidity with which they are dissolved in the mouth.

It is very evident, then, that the sense of taste is far too fallacious in its nature, and tends to inferences far too vague, for the decision of such an important matter as the amount of actual sugar in any saccha rine mixture; such as raw sugar, under any of its conventional denominations, must be regarded. Neither is the test of specifie gravity at all more decisive; for, in the most impure of raw sugars, the total amount of impurities bears but a very trifling ratio to the mass; and, moreover, possesses a specific gravity so little different from that of sugar, that for all practical purposes it may safely be asserted, that all samples of raw sugar, of equal dryness, form, with equal amounts of water of equal temperatures, solutions, the specific gravities of which are also equal. Hence the hydrostatic or saccharometer test cannot, any more than other plans of taking specific gravities, convey the least idea of the purity or impurity, the goodness or badness, of raw sugars.

Having successively considered the chief methods pursued to effect drainage of the non-crystallized from the crystallized portion of concentrated saccharine juices, and in what respects they are adequate or inadequate to the end desired, it now remains for me to devote some attention to the product of such drainage; which product is denominated by the vague term "molasses."

It may be inferred from former remarks, that the investigation of the nature and properties of molasses will best be prosecuted by starting from the assumption that sugar may be concentrated by evaporation, without any destruction whatever: in which case the molasses, or liquor of drainage, would be the precise analogue of that resulting from crystallized saltpetre would consist of nothing but a solution of

sugar in water. I have already remarked that this condition it is impossible absolutely to achieve; but by removing from the solution to be evaporated all destructive agents, and by properly regulating the application of heat, the amount of destruction may be reduced to such a minimum, that the molasses, or syrup of drainage, shall virtually, though not actually, be an aqueous solution of pure sugar.

Descending from this extreme summit of excellence to the other extreme of the scale, we at length arrive at the results of Soubeiran's experiment, wherein every particle of sugar was destroyed.

Within the limits bounded by these two extremes, the ratio between the amount of sugar destroyed, and the amount crystallized, may vary indefinitely; each product yielding a liquor, or syrup of drainage, to which the general term molasses will be applied; although such liquor of drainage may be anything from an aqueous solution of sugar, accompanied by some mere traces of foreign bodies, up to a compound of little else than glucose, mixed with its black acid derivatives.

It is evident, therefore, that the term molasses is a most indefinite one, and should never be used in argument unless its meaning have been specially limited to the conditions of the instance under discussion. It appears, then, that liquor of drainage, or syrup, (molasses,) there ever must be, as the result of the crystallization of sugar, even under the most favorable circumstances; and the question of the best mode of treating it, for the purpose of obtaining its sugar, must be determined by reference to its richness in that substance.

And here the sugar producer is met, on the very threshold of his subject, by the necessity of accommodating his operation to an illdefined popular taste. Were it a question with the colonial sugar producer of selling the pure material-sugar, his course might indeed be very difficult, but it would at least be well defined. At any price, cost what it might, he would be driven to cleanse all his raw crystallized material from every particle of coloring, or other non-crystallized substances; in other words, from every particle of its molasses. Such, however, is not the desideratum which the sugar producer has in view; the public expects him to produce a colored sugar; that is, a white sugar, each crystal of which is coated with a certain amount of molasses; to which latter the qualities of moistness and color are due. Now the question of how much molasses shall be thus allowed to remain as a coating, involves the consideration of such indeterminate matters as, variety of popular tastes; of manufacturing expenses; the comparative value of sugar and rum, &c. As a general rule, however, the West India sugar producers, (those of Jamaica excepted, who obtain a high price for their rum,) consider it profitable to boil the juice very stiff, and export the muscovado sugar in a very undrained state. The glaring impropriety of this procedure has already been pointed out; therefore I need not advert to it again. It is desirable, however, to find adequate causes for a practice which appears so repugnant to all common intelligence.

The causes are chiefly as follow: 1. The desire of the overseers to