Spec. Plant Willd. i. 122.

Cl. 3. Ord. 2. Triandria Digynia. Nat. ord. Gramineacae.

G. 122. Calyx two-valved, involucred, with a long lanugo. Corolla two-valved.

Species 4. S. officinarum.2 Common Sugar-cane. Shane's Jamaica, i. 101. t. 66. Phil. Trans, lxix. 207-278. t. 3.

Officinal. Sacchari faex. Saccharum, Lond. Saccharum, a. non purificatum; b. purificatum; c. syrupus empyreumaticus, Edin. Saccharum purificatum; Saccharum non purificatum, EJUSDEMQUE SYRUPUS EMPYREUMATICUS (Molasses),

Dub. Molasses. Unrefined Sugar. Refined Sugar.

Syn. Sucre, Sucre-pur (F.), Zucher, Weisser Zucher(G.), Suiker (Dutch), Sukker (Dan.), Socker (Swed.), Zucchero brutto, Zucchero in pane, Melassa (I.), Azucar, Atriaca (S.), Assucar (Port.), Shukhir (Arab.), Chenee (H.), Sakkari (San.), Sakkarei (Tarn.), Shukker (Pers.), Soola (Malay).

The common sugar-cane, Arundo saccharifera, is a native of both the East and West Indies. It is cultivated in Persia, and very abundantly in the West Indies. There are two varieties of the officinal sugar-canes : the Creole and the Otaheite. They are distinguished chiefly by the colour of the leaves; those of the former being much deeper than those of the latter. The root is jointed, and sends up several jointed stems, which rise in general to the height of eight or ten feet. A leaf springs from each joint, and the base of it embraces the stem to the next joint above its insertion, before it expands. From this point each leaf is about three or four feet long, and comparatively narrow, like a blade of grass; with the midrib broad, and prominent on the under side, and the edges thin and sharply toothed. The flowers are whitish, in terminal panicles, two or three feet in length, and composed of subdivided spikes, with long flexuose down or lanugo, which encloses the flowers and hides them from the sight.

The seed is oblong, pointed, and ripens in the valves of the flowers.

Although the sugar-cane is undoubtedly a native of the American continent and its islands, yet the culture of it, and the art of making sugar, were carried from Spain to the Canary Islands3, and thence extended, about the end of the fifteenth century, to the West Indies and the Brazils; the former of which supplies the greater part of the consumption of Europe l, a small proportion only being brought from the East Indies. The quantity of sugar yielded by the plant is varied by climate : thus, the Otaheitean cane contains one third more crystallizable matter than the cane of any other place.2 The average quantity is from six to fifteen per cent.

1 Ed. Phil. Journ.

2 Cannamelle (F.), Zuckerrohr (G.), Suikerriet (Dutch), Cannamele (I.), Cana de azucar (S.), Quasab (Arab.), Can che (Chin.).

3 At one time sugar was the staple commodity of Madeira, although there is now one sugar-mill only on the island; but the sugar is uncommonly fine, and has an agreable odour, not unlike that of violets. Sprengel says, the first notice of the sugar-cane is found in the Itinerary of Abusaida, in which it is stated that it grows at Siraf; and Abulfed says it grows spontaneously at Almansura, in India. Ebu Alvan first described the mode of collecting and preparing the juice.

In the West Indies the plant is propagated by cuttings of the stalk taken from near its top, and laid horizontally in the ground. It requires a rich permeable soil; and from fourteen to seventeen months before it ripens : good land will furnish five crops of shoots, without transplanting. The canes are cut for the purpose of making sugar between the sixth and thirteenth month of their growth, when the stems have acquired from seven to ten feet in height, a proportionable size, and the cuticle appears smooth, dry, and brittle. This generally happens in the months of February, March, and April. As soon as they are cut, the canes are stripped of their leaves, and immediately crushed between iron rollers, to express the juice, which is received into large leaden vessels, called receivers, whence it is conveyed into a large copper vessel, named the clarifier, where it is mixed with lime, in the proportion of one pint to 100 gallons of juice, and heated to the temperature of 140°.3 A thick scum soon forms on the top, from under which the clear liquor is drawn off by a cock into a large copper boiler, where it is boiled till the bulk of the liquor is very considerably diminished.

The boiling is successively repeated in four other coppers, progressively smaller; and from the last, which is called the teache, it is conveyed into shallow wooden coolers, where it grains, and the concreted mass separates from the uncrystallizable matter, or molasses. This mass is then put into empty hogsheads, having holes in the bottom, through each of which the stalk of a plantain-leaf is thrust; and when the molasses has drained off the process is finished. In this state the sugar is brought home, under the name of raw or muscovado sugar. In Europe, however, sugar undergoes another process for its purification. It is coarsely ground, dissolved in lime-water, and clarified with bullocks' blood; then boiled down to a proper consistency, the impurities being skimmed off as they rise, and poured into conical earthen vessels, where it is allowed to grain. The point of the cone is perforated; and the base covered with moist clay, the moisture of which percolates the sugar, and runs off through the perforated apex, which is placed undermost, carrying with it any uncrys-tallized impure syrup. In this state it is called loaf sugar; and requires a second purification before it is considered as completely refined sugar.

A new method of purification was antroduced by Messrs. Taylor and Howard. It consists in boiling the sugar with steam, at a low temperature, and in vacuo.

1 The average importation into England and Scotland, between 1787 and 1790, amounted annually to 1,952,262 cwt - Mosley's Hist, of Sugar, p. 154.

2 The Batavian, which is less productive, is undoubtedly a distinct species. The foliage is purple, and very broad.

3 The lime extricates carbonic acid from the juice, and forms, with the herbaceous or feculent matter, an insoluble compound, which rises to the surface, and forms the scum.

Sugar was originally brought from Asia, about the period of the crusades, but was for a long time only employed as a medicine.

Qualities.-Pure raw or muscovado sugar is odorous, and sweet to the taste. It is in concreted masses, consisting of small, dry, sparkling, irregular crystals of a yellowish brown colour. Refined sugar is inodorous, and sweet to the taste. Its colour is pure white; and the mass or loaf in which it is concreted should be hard, extremely brittle, pulverulent, and persistent in the air. One hundred parts of sugar in its ordinary state contain, according to Berzelius, 5.3 of water; and it requires its own weight only of water at 48° for its solution. When united at a higher temperature with a smaller quantity of water, it remains dissolved, forming syrup. Four parts of boiling alcohol dissolve one part of sugar; but by rest a moiety of the sugar again separates in crystals. Oils also readily combine with it, and the mixture is miscible with water. Lime and the fixed alkalies unite with sugar, and form compounds without any sweetness of taste. The concentrated strong acids dissolve and decompose sugar, the nitric converting it into oxalic acid, but the weaker simply dissolve it; and the alkaline and earthy hydrosulphurets, sul-phurets, and phosphorets, decompose it, and resolve it into a substance resembling gum.1 "When sugar is boiled," says Vogel, "with peroxide of mercury and acetate of copper, these salts are converted into protoxides; bichloride of mercury is converted into calomel: and sulphate of copper and nitrate of mercury are reduced to a metallic state.

But sugar does not decompose the salts of iron, zinc, tin, and manganese." Its ultimate constituents, according to the experiments of Lavoisier, are sixty-four oxygen, twenty-

1 Rollo on Diabetes, 452. Thomson's Chymistry, 4th edit. vol. iv. 660, eight carbon, and eight hydrogen in 100 parts1; but according to Thenard and Gay Lussac, the proportions are, oxygen 50.63, carbon 42.47, hydrogen 6.90, with which the last analysis of Berzelius nearly coincides. According to Dr. Prout, the best loaf sugar consists of 42.85 of carbon, and 57.15 of oxygen and hydrogen in the proportion for forming water: or 1 proportion of carbon = 6.12 + 1 of water = 9, making the equivalent 15.12.

Molasses has a peculiar odour, and a sweet, empyreumatic taste. It is of a brown or black colour, thick, and viscid; and is constituted chiefly of the uncrystallizable part of the juice of the sugar-cane, which Prout has denominated liquid sugar, combined with saline, acid, and other vegetable matters. It is more soluble in alcohol than sugar.

Medical properties and uses.-Raw sugar and molasses are laxative; and refined sugar externally applied is escharotic. All the kinds are extremely nutrient, and more generally used as articles of diet than for medicinal purposes; except it be to cover the taste of nauseous drugs. Sugar, however, is said to be a preventive of worms, and to prove useful in scurvy; but it is hurtful to those of bilious, hypochondriacal, and dyspeptic habits. Milk boiled with fine sugar will keep good for a considerable time. It is said to be an antidote to the poison of verdigris, but as it does not decompose the salts of copper except at a boiling temperature it cannot be regarded as an antidote of cupreous poisons. It requires to be given in large quantities, both in the solid form and in solution of water. It appears to act chymically on the poison, and also by increasing the peristaltic action of the bowels.2

Officinal preparations.-Syrupi omnes, L. E. D. Trochisci omnes, E. Confectiones omnes, L.