| ||Oxygen|Hydrogen
-------------+-------+-------+-------+---------+-------++------+--------
Lignin, or | | | | | || |
Woody Fibre| 51.45 | 42.73 | 5.82 | or51.45 | 48.55 || |
Starch | 43.55 | 49.63 | 6.77 | 43.55 | 56.45 || |
Sugar | 42.47 | 50.63 | 6.90 | 42.47 | 57.53 || |
Gum | 42.23 | 50.84 | 6.93 | 42.23 | 57.77 || |
Alcohol | 51.98 | 34.32 | 13.70 | 51.98 | 38.99 || | 9.03
Acetic Acid | 50.22 | 44.15 | 5.63 | 50.22 | 46.91 || 2.87 |
Resin | 75.94 | 13.34 | 10.72 | 75.94 | 15.16 || | 8.90
Wax | 81.79 | 5.54 | 12.76 | 81.79 | 6.30 || | 11.01
-------------+-------+-------+-------+---------+-------++------+--------

By a reference to the foregoing table it will be easily understood how
slight a change in the proportion of the ingredients of any one of the
substances contained therein will convert it into an entirely
different one. In chemistry we are able, to a certain extent, to
imitate the operations of nature; but we must follow in the same
course laid down by her; thus, we can convert woody fibre, or sawdust
and starch, into sugar, gum, alcohol, and acetic acid; but we cannot
convert alcohol, acetic acid, or gum into sugar, starch or woody
fibre; and of such importance is a slight alteration of the
proportions of these elements--carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen--that the
abstraction of carbon from sugar, and the addition of a portion of the
prime support of life, vegetation and combustion, oxygen, changes the
harmless sugar into the most violent of poisons, oxalic acid, which
consists of 26.57 carbon, 70.69 oxygen, and 2.74 hydrogen.

Let us now examine the action of lime on sugar, and we shall find it
equally, if not more, injurious than on the other substances. Sugar is
capable of dissolving half its weight of lime, by which its sweet
taste is destroyed, and it becomes converted into gum; the lime
abstracting carbonic acid from it to form a carbonate of lime or
chalk. It will be seen by the above table that--

100 parts of sugar contain 42.47 carbon.
100 parts of gum contain 42.23 ditto.
-----
Difference 24

So that, if we extract 24-100ths of a grain of carbon from 100 grains
of sugar, we convert them into gum. Let us suppose that about two
ounces of lime, or say 1,000