that,
notwithstanding the French commission at Martinique report
otherwise, some modification of Mr. Melsens' process may be most
advantageously employed in making cane sugar if not as a defecator,
at least to prevent fermentation, and, probably, also as a
decolorising agent.

Mr. Melsens showed me letters he had received from Java from a
person with whom he had no acquaintance, stating that he had used
the bisulphate of lime with complete success; and whilst I was with
him he again received letters from the same person, stating that by
its use he had not only improved the quality of sugar, but had
raised the return to 9 per cent. of the weight of cane. From the
letters which I saw, the process appears to have been tried on a
very large scale, with the advantage of filters and a vacuum pan.
Where the old mode of leaving half the dirt with the sugar, and
boiling up to a temperature of 340 degrees or thereby, is continued,
I fear there is not much chance of either bisulphate or anything
else making any very great improvement.

The use of bisulphate of lime is patented in England and the
colonies, but I believe I may state the charge for the right of
using it will be made extremely moderate.

The points which appeared to me worthy of remark in visiting the
beet-root sugar works are, the extreme care that nothing shall be
lost--the great attention paid to cleanliness in every part of the
process, besides the particular care given to defecation. No vessel
is ever used twice without being thoroughly washed. Such a thing as
the employment of an open fire in any part of the manufacture is
quite unknown. Everything is done by steam, of a pressure of from 4
to 5 atmospheres. In the more recently started works, the
evaporation is entirely carried on in vacuum. In some of the older
works copper evaporators, heated by coils of steam piping, and
having covers, with chimneys to carry off the vapor, are still used;
but of the eight works I visited I only saw them in use in one of
them, and they are nowhere used excepting to evaporate to the point
when the second filtration takes place.

The coolers I saw were invariably made of iron, and varied in depth
from 2 to over 6 feet. These very deep vessels are used for the
crystallization of sugar, made of the fourth, fifth and sixth
re-