The Sugars in modern use are, cane sugar, maple, beet, maize, and palm sugar. The ancients had only honey, grape sugar, manna, and fruit sugars.

Sugar is also maufactured from potatoes, seaweeds, milk, Carrageen, Ceylon, and Iceland mosses, and even from sawdust and rags !

The cane sugar first claims our attention. It is the juice of the sugar cane, a plant which was cultivated in China and the South Sea Islands before the historical era; for it is really a native of the East. Through Sicily and Spain it reached the Canary Islands. It was introduced to St. Domingo by the Spaniards in 1520, and gradually spread all over the West Indies and tropical regions of the New World. It will, however, grow far beyond the boundaries of the tropics. It flourishes in a temperature of from 77° F. to 66° F. It is grown also in Nepaul, and on the high plains of Mexico. The juice of the sugar cane contains: - sugar, 18 to 22 parts in the 100; water and gluten, 71; woody fibre, 10; saline matter, 1.

The sugar cane is a very elegant plant; the sap contains the sugar up to a certain height, after attaining which it appears to spend its sweetness in nourishing the growing stem and leaves. Consequently only the under part of the cane is used for the extraction of sugar. The leaves and tops are chopped off, the remainder of the canes are passed between heavy iron rollers which crush them, and squeeze out the juice into large vats or vessels where it is clarified by the addition of lime.

Lime neutralizes the acid which forms in the fresh juice, combines with the gluten, and carries it to the bottom of the vessel. The gluten is removed, because if left it would act as a natural cause of fermentation, and cause the sugar to turn to acid. After being clarified and filtered the juice is boiled rapidly down, and run into wooden vessels to cool and crystallize.

When the crystals are formed it is put into perforated casks to drain. The remainder left is muscovado or raw sugar; the drainings are molasses. The molasses and skimmings are fermented and distilled into rum.

The raw sugar is still further refined by boiling, etc.

The juice of the sugar cane is so nutritive that it is a perfect food for man, capable of sustaining life without any other sustenance; but this is not the case with sugar, because the gluten has been removed.

Beetroot Sugar comes next in the list of European sugars. It is extracted from the sugar beet, which often contains a tenth of its weight in sugar; by squeezing out the juice the raw sugar is obtained, and when refined can scarcely be told from cane sugar. Beet sugar is manufactured in France, Belgium, Germany, and Russia.

Palm Or Date Sugar, Or Jaggery

When the top shoot of any of the great palms is wounded it yields a quantity of sweet juice, which, boiled down, gives the slightly brown raw sugar known by the name of jaggery. The date and the gommuti palm both yield sugar. The wild date palm, Phamix Sylvestris, supplies the largest amount of the saccharine juice. This date sugar is chiefly consumed in India, but some of it is imported into this country and occasionally sold as cane sugar.

The Cocoa-nut tree has also a saccharine sap which is boiled down (in the South Sea Islands) till it becomes a brown syrup resembling molasses.

Maple Sugar is the juice of the sugar maple (Acer saccharinam) which grows in New England, and by the lakes, and in the provinces of British America. The Canadas produce a great deal of maple sugar.

In several parts forests of maple trees cover the country, and from them large quantities of maple sugar are obtained. Incisions are made in the trunk for the purpose of collecting the sap, which is gathered twice a day. The first which issues from the tree after an incision is made, is clear and without taste or colour; but after standing a day or two it becomes sweet, and a few days after the sap runs sugary from the tree. It is boiled down to the crystallizing point, and poured into brick-shaped moulds in which it becomes solid. Specimens of maple sugar of every kind may be seen in the Food Gallery of the South Kensington Museum.

The brown-coloured sugar is preferred on account of its maple flavour, but the clear sap when carefully boiled in glazed pots will yield a beautifully white sugar, which cannot be distinguished from cane sugar. The molasses drained from maple sugar is very pleasant to the taste, and is an American luxury.

Maize Sugar is made from the green stalks of maize or Indian corn, which, when boiled down, give a good sugar juice.

Potato Or Starch Sugar

Starch of any kind is dissolved by boiling and becomes a sticky jelly; by the addition of a little sulphuric acid it is converted into grape or honey sugar. One pound of acid to one hundred pounds of starch will suffice to convert into sugar, potato, wheaten, or sago starch. By a further chemical process a solid sugar can be obtained - i.e., the acid is separated by lime, and the liquor boiled down. Or if sulphuric acid be objected to, malt may be used for the same purpose. Fifteen pounds of malt are added to one hundred pounds of starch; it is subjected to a heat of 1600 F. or 1700 F. for three hours, then filtered and evaporated. This sugar is used for adulterating cane sugar, and in the manufacture of spirits. Brandy is also distilled from it.

Sulphuric acid has also the marvellous effect of changing paper, cotton, or flax, cotton and linen rags or sawdust into sugar by the same operation, only demanding a longer time to achieve the transformation, as it first changes the material into starch, and then the starch into sugar. Robinson Crusoe would have rejoiced to know that from starch he could manufacture sugar for himself. The barley supplying the malt.

The Mosses known as Carrageen (collected on the coast of Ireland), Ceylon, Iceland, and many other seaweeds, yield when boiled in water a jelly which is very nutritious and wholesome in itself, and can be converted by sulphuric acid into sugar.

Sorghum Sugar and Sugar Millet are Chinese sugars. Sorghum is the juice of the sorghum, a kind of Dhurra plant.

Coarse brown sugar, though the cheapest, is not profitable to purchase. It is mixed with woody fibre and grit, and contains a kind of fungus resembling the yeast plant. Dr. Hassall found in it the Acarus sacchari, or sugar mite, an insect which resembles the itch insect, and which he thinks may cause the grocer's itch, a complaint attacking people who handle sugars. Good moist sugar is light in colour, dry, and crystallized; the more it is crystallized the better it is. Bad moist sugar is damp, heavy and not crystallized. It is no economy at all to buy it, as it outweighs the good. Lump sugars differ very little; the price being affected chiefly by the colour. The whitest is the dearest.

Molasses And Treacle

Molasses is the drainings of the raw or unrefined sugar; treacle the drainings of refined sugar.

Sugar contains four to ten per cent, of moisture; treacle, about twenty-three. The rest is carbonaceous matter, but contains no nitrogen.

They are therefore heat-producing and fattening agents.