the hold, would be prevented, not only to
the great advantage of the planter, but to the great comfort of the
captain, passengers, and crew of the vessel freighted with it.

It is not improbable that, by re-boiling the molasses in the
vacuum-pan, and employing tannin in the manner adopted in the process
for making sugar from beet-root, from one to five per cent. of
crystallisable sugar could be recovered from it, and this per centage
might possibly even be found to admit of increase by the further
treatment with lime-water and the gun-stock tree s already suggested,
for the first clarification of the liquor received from the mill. With
this view, Mr. Fownes recommends the substitution of puncheons, or
casks, for the molasses cisterns ordinarily employed in the
curing-house, to receive the molasses as it drains from the new sugar,
and thus retaining it until after the busy period of crop time has
closed.

Should sugar of a whiter quality than the ordinary muscovado of
commerce be desired, this advantage may be readily obtained, as Mr.
Fownes judiciously observes, by filtering the thin syrup, ready for
the vacuum-pan, through a bed of fine charcoal, as is done by the
sugar refiners, and afterwards washing the crystals of sugar with
white syrup, when the molasses has thoroughly drained from them. By
this process, which, however, is attended with some increase of
expense, and may not, in consequence, be always advisable, muscovado
sugar may be obtained, of a quality hardly inferior to that of refined
sugar. Mr. Fownes thus sums up the principal points to which he is
desirous of calling the attention of the intelligent and enterprising
planter.

1. "To obtain, by the use of a properly-constructed mill, the greatest
possible amount of juice from the cane."

By this, according to Mr. Fownes, a gain of from 20 to 30 per cent.,
equivalent to as much marketable sugar, may be obtained without any
additional expense; but as, from Mr. Fownes' own showing, there is a
residuum of 10 to 15 per cent of liquor obstinately retained by the
megass, or cane trash, after the most powerful pressure to which it
can be subjected; much, if not all, even of this loss might be
prevented by subjecting the megass, on issuing from between the
rollers, to the action of water for a brief time, passing it once more
through the mill, and adding the saccharine solution so obtained, or
that obtained directly from the cane on its first crushing. The wa