NOTES OF THE MONTH.

We have received a second letter from the author of Nature's Hygiene. Mr. Kingzett should remember that the book was sent to us for review, and that we criticised its tendency, and not Mr. Kingzett's personal ability as a chemist. The latter point we perfectly recognise, and only regret that he should have allowed himself to issue a work which while in its title purely scientific should yet introduce the mention of a special commercial article. We have no desire to detract one iota from the purely chemical merit of Mr. Kingzett's experiments, and we hope that he will be satisfied that no personal slight in this direction was for a moment intended.

46

In another column we print Mr. Edge's reply to our remarks in the last number of this journal. Our readers will see that we are credited with thinking that "no milk dealer could either speak the truth or be honest." Such an idea is absurd, and we do not for a moment hold this opinion; but what we say is that, through want of technical chemical knowledge, Mr. Edge has been led in the utmost good faith to make perfectly erroneous statements, which are simply a repetition of similar charges urged from time to time by unscientific persons. If Mr. Edge were a chemist he would know that no opinion can be formed upon a milk without a quantitative analysis, and that the analyst, according to the schedule of the Act, ought to give his quantities. The words are quite plain “that it consists of parts as under;" then follows the analysis of the milk, and lastly come the 'remarks," in which the inference to be drawn from the figures is stated. It is therefore clear that the charge against analysts in general of not giving quantitative results must fail. The second charge made, namely, that the analyst has a direct interest and monetary benefit from convictions, is now toned down by Mr. Edge to the fact that when called upon as a witness he has the usual fee. This is a very different state of matters, because the fee as witness being payable whether the prosecution is successful or not, the charge formerly made was evidently untenable. We would, however, point out to Mr. Edge that the Act expressly provides that to save expense the analyst need not be called, and if the Association purposely incurs this expense they have only themselves to blame. In London the attendance of an analyst in court is a thing almost unheard of. If the certificate is disputed the duplicate sample is simply sent to Somerset House, when their certificate decides the case, and no costs of professional witnesses are incurred by either side. It is therefore clear that Mr. Edge's charge against analysts of having any monetary interest in prosecutions is unjust and ought to be withdrawn unreservedly.

In his letter Mr. Edge introduces a new charge, to wit, that a milk which has been slightly watered may pass an analyst. There can be no doubt that such is the case, but at whose door does the fault lie? Unquestionably it is at that of the trade societies. When the Act passed, the Society of Public Analysts, after most careful consideration, fixed a fair standard not to be complained of by any honest dealer, but forthwith all the ingenuity and legal acumen of defending counsel was put to work to prove that in certain extreme cases milk might fall below this standard, and by continual arguments, coupled

with the fact that Somerset House took for its standard an abnormally low one, it has come to this, that "pure milk" by the common limit of purity may and often does contain 10 per cent. of water if the original article were rich. All this suited the Societies very well until they in turn desired to use the Act against the farmers, and then, lo and behold, they object to the low standard which their own action has brought about. After all it is only human nature to wish a low standard of 8.5 solids not fat when they are defendants, then grumble when it passes as watered milk when sold to them, and then abuse analysts if they do not always use the Society's staudard of 90 per cent.

Then, again, on the question of cream, mentioned by Mr. Edge, the milkmen have again themselves entirely to blame. The lowest honest natural fat was taken by us as 2.5, but some excuse for skimming beyond that was necessary, and therefore the theory that milk served from a can might perfectly innocently lose its fat to the extent of at least one-half, was started, and an eminent professor retained to prove it experimentally. The defence was successful, and, as an analyst has no means of knowing from whence a sample comes, it follows that milks have to be passed which on their very face bear evidence of loss of cream. This re-acts of course against the milkmen when they desire to prosecute the farmers, and then they blame the analysts instead of themselves.

The Chemist and Druggist for once speaks out manfully on the tincture of quinine case, and objects to the defence evidence as ridiculous, but it cannot help giving the analysts a little kick although it practically admits that in this instance at least the Public Analyst had a raison d'étre. It says that statements like those of Dr. Browning "would hardly pass unchallenged even in the Society of Public Analysts." After all Dr. Browning's statements are simply a reductio ad absurdam of a style of defence on the part of the chemists and druggists which we have often had occasion to challenge and which has before been found successful on grounds very little better.

Bristol possesses an analyst whose report of the results of 20 samples has been simply ordered to lie upon the table because his appointment has not yet been approved by the Local Government Board. Surely it is a pity that such a waste of energy and money should have taken place, and the authorities should not have first seen that they had their officer's qualifications approved before sending in samples to him.

A correspondent in a contemporary says:-A poor ill-used dairyman of Ramsgate has been fined for only adding 53 per cent. of water to his milk. I presume he supplied the Cockney visitors. Last year the Margate magistrates, at the end of the season, fined a lot of milkmen for watering the skim, and it was really heart-rending to hear those men argue that if the system of persecution continued, they would never be able to make out the quantity of sky blue demanded by the visitors. They considered the Margate water nourishing stuff, and quite worth 5d. a quart.

Mr. F. W. Stoddart has been appointed Public Analyst for Salisbury, in the room of his late father.

SOOTHING POWDERS.-At an inquest held on August 3rd, by Mr. Brian, Coroner for Plymouth, an infant, aged 10 weeks, was proved to have died of narcotic poisoning after the administration of part of a powder purchased from a local druggist, and described as a “ Steedman's Soothing Powder."

A dealer, at Ballynaninch, Co. Down, has been fined £2 for selling flour adulterated with oat flour, and containing fungi, as certified by Dr. C. A. Cameron, County Analyst.

RECENT CHEMICAL PATENTS.

The following specifications have been recently published, and can be obtained from the Great Seal Office, Cursitor Street, Chancery Lane, London.

Spon's Dictionary of Arts and Manufactures, Part II.; Tables for Analysis of a Simple Salt by A. Vinter; Contributions to the Chemistry of Bast Fibres, by E. J. Bevan and C. F. Cross The Chemist and Druggist; The Brewers' Guardian; The British Medical Journal; The Medical Press; The Pharmaceutical Journal; The Sanitary Record; The Miller; Journal of Applied Science ; The Boston Journal of Chemistry; The Provisioner; The Practitioner; New Remedies; Proceedings of the American Chemical Society; Le Practicien ; The Inventors' Record; New York Public Health; The Scientific American; Society of Arts Journal; Sanitary Engineer of New York; The Cowkeeper and Dairyman's Journal.

THE ANALYST.

OCTOBER, 1880.

175

ON THE MANUFACTURE OF SUGAR FROM THE SUGAR CANE.

BY R. H. HARLAND, F.C.S.

THE art of manufacturing and refining sugar has now attained to the rank of the second industry in the world. The two sources from which the supply of sugar is derived are the beet root and sugar cane-the one growing in Europe, the other requiring the heat of a tropical climate to bring it to maturity. Many other plants also have the property of producing crystallizable sugar, identical in chemical composition with that prepared from the beet or cane; notably the sugar maple (Acer. saccharum), from which a large quantity of sugar is manufactured in Canada, the United States, and Borneo, but the supply is now gradually falling off on account of the destruction of the maple forests.

The sugar obtained by the natives of Bengal and Siam from the various species of palm is, on account of the crude way in which it is manufactured, of very inferior quality, and is mainly consumed in the countries where it is grown. The juice of the Nipah palm (Nipa fruticans) is almost equal in saccharine richness to that extracted from the cane, with the advantage that it is much cleaner, and contains no coloring matter or chlorophyll, the vegetable matter being easily precipitated, giving a liquor as clear as spring water. This species of palm flourishes near the sea, or on the edges of brackish pools, and takes up a large quantity of salt, which makes its appearance in the juice in varying quantities ; sufficient, in some cases, to give the liquor a decidedly saline taste. Were it nor for this drawback, I have no doubt that a large quantity of excellent sugar would be obtained from this source.

Since the time when the beet root was first experimentally cultivated for sugar, it has, by careful cultivation become the source of nearly half the total quantity of sugar which is produced at the present day. It is not, however, entirely due to the agriculturalist that beetroot sugar is able to compete so successfully with cane, but a great deal of the success attending its production is due to the fact that the manufacturer called in the assistance of chemistry and chemists, to enable him to decide on the most scientific and profitable method of working; and although the average quantity of crystallizable sugar contained in the beetroot juice is only half that which is contained in the juice of the sugar cane, and other impurities are likewise present which have to be removed previous to the evaporation of the liquor to form the best crystals, yet the quality of the product is superior to and commands a much higher price than the raw cane sugars which are imported to this country from the colonies, and which require to be refined previous to consumption. Of course, Demerara sugars, and also sugars from other countries where the vacuum pan is in use, compete favorably with the refined article, either on account of their peculiar color or some other distinguishing mark which renders them pleasing to the eye, and even, perhaps, from the fact of their containing a proportion of uncrystallizable sugar (molasses), they are more palatable to the public, who, for some purposes, prefer the impure article to the pure loaf sugar.

The reason for the difference in quality between the colonial cane sugar and continental beet sugars is easily found when we take into consideration the difference in the mode of manufacture, and also the fact that the extraction of sugar from the beet has been investigated scientifically by some of the leading continental chemists, and chemistry and proper chemical supervision rule all the operations from the manuring of the root to the time when the sugar is turned out of the factory in an almost chemically pure condition. That this is so, is proved by the fact that almost every chemical journal issued contains the results of some research or enquiry into one or other of the important operations connected with its manufacture or the products produced therefrom; and, further, every manufacturer knows so well the great importance of chemical analysis, that hardly one beetroot sugar factory is without a chemist. Now, in the case of the sugar-cane planter: he begins by manuring his land with some compound which is very likely to be quite unsuitable for the variety of cane which he wishes to grow; perhaps he does not consider it necessary to trash his canes or clean them so as to allow the rays of the sun to exert their action on the cane, and assist in producing the saccharine matter; but leaves them to grow as best they may until the time comes for cutting and extracting the sugar; in many cases the boiling-house is unable to keep pace with the cutting, from bad weather or other causes, and a stock of canes are standing at the mill, and perhaps remain exposed to the atmosphere for some days, but this is not of so much importance, as I shall afterwards show (except in the case of canes that have been grown on land that is poor in lime salts: in this instance the juice is generally very acid, and rapidly undergoes fermentation even before it is expressed from the canes), as a practice which I have frequently seen followed of leaving a portion of the juice to stand all night, or cleaning and evaporating the juice to a density of 18° to 20° B., and allowing it to stand-say for 8 to 12 hours-to settle, thus causing fermentation to set up, and consequent loss of crystallizable sugar and formation of molasses; in fact, in many boiling-houses the operations are conducted entirely by rule of thumb, and the overseer in charge knows little or nothing about the composition or properties of the substance which he is manufacturing.

Of course these remarks do not apply with the same force to estates which work with the triple-effect and vacuum pan, but even in many of these cases mistakes are made, and losses of sugar occur which would be prevented and remedied if a system of analysis were carried out. Occasionally, syrups are allowed to stand too long a time before re-boiling, under the supposition that on account of the density they will keep any length of time, but in hot climates the temperature is so favorable to fermentation, that in syrups of a density of 38° to 40° B. crystallizable sugar is converted into glucose, although the appearance of the surface of the liquor would not seem to indicate that any chemical change was taking place; indeed, it is not even necessary that the sugar should be in the form of syrup tɔ allow of this change taking place, for low sugars will form molasses and drain rapidly when heaped in bulk or stowed in a ship's hold, owing to rapid conversion of crystallized sugar into glucose by the action of fermentation. This is a well known fact, and the loss of weight in cargoes of raw sugar is constantly being determined; but the actual loss of crystallizable sugar caused by drainage and deterioration, and formation of probably not less than from 2 to 4 per cent. more glucose in the raw sugar than it contained when shipped, is a fact that, up to the present time, has been lost sight of. In one instance, where a ry sugar, containing 88 per cent. crystallizable sugar, 3 per cent. uncrystallizable, and ·92 ash,