ia and Japan. The sorghum-cane grows well in the temperate zone, and
its cultivation in the Mississippi Valley States has been successful.
The sugar is not easily crystallizable, however, and it is usually made
into table-sirup.

Maguey-sugar is derived from the sap of the maguey-plant (_Agave
Americana_). It is much used in Mexico and the Central American states.
The method of manufacture is very crude and the product is not exported.
Palm-sugar is obtained from the sap of several species of palm growing
in India and Africa.

=Sugar Manufacture.=--Sugar manufacture includes three
processes--expressing the sap, evaporating, and refining. The first two
are carried on at or near the plantations; the last is an affair
requiring an immense capital and a most elaborately organized plant. The
refining is done mainly in the great centres of population at places
most convenient for transportation. The raw sugar may travel five or ten
thousand miles to reach the refinery; the refined product rarely travels
more than a thousand miles.

After it has been cut and stripped of its leaves the sugar-cane is
crushed between powerful rollers in order to express the juice. The
sugar-beet is rasped or ground to a pulp and then subjected to great
pressure. The expressed juice contains about ten or twelve per cent. of
sugar. In some factories the beet, or the cane, is cut into thin slices
and thrown into water, the juice being extracted by the solvent
properties of the latter. This is known as the "diffusion" process.

The juice is first strained or filtered under pressure in order to
remove all foreign matter and similar impurities. It is then clarified
by adding slacked lime, at the same time heating the liquid nearly to
the boiling point and skimming off the impurities that rise to the
surface. The purified juice is then boiled rapidly in vacuum pans until
it is greatly concentrated.

When the proper degree of concentration is reached, the liquid is
quickly run off into shallow pans, in which most of it immediately
crystallizes. The crystalline portion forms the _raw sugar_ of commerce;
the remaining part is molasses. The whole mass is then shovelled into a
centrifugal machine which in a few minutes separates the two products.

In purchasing raw sugar, the refiner was formerly at a loss to know just
how much pure sugar could be made from a given weight of the raw sugar.
In order to aid in making a correct determination, the Dutch go