depraved and convicted. Where reformation is aimed at, the moral sense will be found most accessible where the mind is maintained in most healthy activity, and where the general comfort of the whole system is most effectually promoted.

CHAPTER X.

THE SWEETS WE EXTRACT.

THE GRAPE AND CANE SUGARS.

Mineral sweets.-Vegetable sweets.-Number of these known to modern nations.The grape sugars; their sensible and chemical characters-Honey sugars.-Trebizond honey.-Poisoning of Xenophon's soldiers.-Fruit sugars.-Starch or potato sugar, manufacture of—Sugar from rags, from sawdust, and from Carrigeen, Ceylon, and Iceland mosses.-The cane sugars.-Spread of the sugar cane from Asia through Europe to America-Varieties of the sugar cane.-Nutritive qualities of the raw cane juice.-Extensive consumption of it.-Composition of the sugar cane.-Manufacture of cane sugar.-Difficulties in the manufacture.-Great loss of sugar in consequence.-Improvements in the manufacture, and their effects on West Indian prosperity.-Total produce of cane sugar in the world.-Consumption of sugar in the United Kingdom.-Sensible and chemical characters of cane sugar.-Beet or European sugar.-Its importance on the continent of Europe.Number and produce of the manufactories of France, Germany and Russia.— Composition of the sugar beet.-Difficulties in extracting the sugar.-Progress of the manufacture. Its chemico-agricultural relations.-Palm or date sugars.Quantity produced yearly.—Maple, or North American sugar.—Quantity produced in Canada, New England, and New York.-Mode of extraction.-Chemical changes in the maple sap.-Maize, or Mexican sugar; manufacture of, in the United States, and in France. Sorghum sugar, the cane of the north.-Total quantity of sugar extracted for use.-Chemistry in its economical and social relations.

IN common life, the sweets we extract are a constant accompaniment of the beverages we infuse. At least, as we use them in Europe and America, sugar is a usual addition to the infusions of tea, coffee, and cocoa.

Of substances which are sweet to the taste, the chemist is familiar with many which have no relation to the wants

A

or usages of common life. Sugar of lead is a well-known poison, which derives its name from the sweetness of its taste. Silver in certain of its compounds * is equally sweet. mineral earth called glucina (from yλukus, sweet), produces many compounds which have a sugary taste when first put into the mouth; and numerous other instances might be named. It is only those sweet substances, however, which exist in or are extracted from plants, that are directly connected with our modern comforts. These sweets not only accompany, on our tables, the beverages we infuse, but are the ingredients from which our brewers and distillers manufacture the liquors we ferment. They fall naturally to be considered, therefore, in this place.

Of these vegetable sweets, modern nations use many va rieties. In such substances as luxuries of life, we are, indeed, far richer than any of the ancient nations. Thus, to the honey, grape, manna, and fruit sugars, which were the principal sweets of the ancient world, we now add the cane, maple, beet, maize, and palm sugars. We manufacture sugar also from potatoes and other substances rich in starch; from sea-weeds gathered by the shore; even from sawdust when an emergency arises; and we extract it from the milk of our domestic cattle. It has become to us, in consequence, almost a necessary of life. We consume it in millions of tons; we employ thousands of ships in transporting it. Millions of men spend their lives in cultivating the plants from which it is extracted, and the fiscal duties imposed upon it add largely to the revenue of nearly every established government. It may be said, therefore, to exercise a more direct and extended influence not only over the social comfort, but over the social condition of mankind, than any other production of the vegetable kingdom, with the exception, perhaps, of cotton alone.

• One called the hyposulphite of silver, for example, is very sweet.

THE GRAPE SUGAR.

199

The numerous varieties of useful sugars with which we are acquainted, may be arranged under four main kinds or heads. These are the grape sugars, the cane sugars, the manna sugars, and milk or animal sugar. I shall treat of

each in its order.

I. The GRAPE SUGARS include, as varieties, the sugar of the grape, the sugars of honey, the sugar of fruits, and potato or starch sugar.

10. Grape sugar.-When the ripe grape is dried in the air, it forms the well-known raisin of commerce. When this raisin is opened, numerous whitish crystalline brittle granules are seen within it, which are sweet to the taste. These consist of what is called grape sugar, and they are the source of the sweetness both of the grape and the raisin. It dissolves readily in water, and if yeast be added to the solution, soon enters into fermentation.

The results of this fermentation are, first, a spirituous liquor resembling weak wine, and afterwards, as the fermentation proceeds, an acid liquor, like sour wine or vinegar.

In Syria, a sweet preparation is made from the juice of the grape. It consists chiefly of grape sugar, and is exported to Egypt under the name of dips or dibs.*

2o. Honey sugars.-The bee has been long known and admired for its industry, and the honey it collects indulged in as a luxury. This honey is formed, or naturally deposited, in the nectaries of flowers, and is extracted from them by the working bees. They deposit it in their crop or honey-bag, which is an expansion of the gullet (œsophagus), and from this receptacle they disgorge it again when they return to the hive. In the interval, it is probably somewhat

* In Genesis, xliii. 11, this word is translated honey, though the sweet of the grape is probably meant. Dibs is also the word used for Samson's honey (Judges, xiv. 8), though Assal is also the word now employed in Syria and Egypt to denote the honey of the bae,

altered by admixture with the liquids which are secreted in the mouth and crop of the insect-so that the honey we extract from the hive may not be exactly in the same chemical condition as when it was sucked up from the flowers by the laborious bee.

When liquid honey is allowed to stand for a length of time, it gradually thickens and consolidates. By pressure in a linen bag, it may then be separated into a white solid sugar, consisting of minute crystals, which remain in the bag, and a thick semi-fluid syrup which flows through it. In old honey the proportion of syrup is often small, the sugar of the syrup gradually crystallising in greater quantity. Both the solid and liquid sugars have the same general properties. They are both equally sweet; both have the same chemical composition, and both begin to ferment when water and a little yeast are added to them. The solid sugar of honey is identical with the sugar of the grape. The liquid sugar differs from the solid chiefly in refusing to crystallise, and in containing an admixture of colouring and odoriferous substances produced by the flowers from which the bee has extracted it.

To these foreign substances honey owes the varied colours, flavours, and fragrances, which in different countries and districts it is known to possess, and for which it is often highly prized. Hence the estimation in which the honey of Mount Ida, in Crete, has been always held. Hence also the perfume of the Narbonne honey, of the honey of Chamouni, and of our own high moorland honey when the heather is in bloom. Sometimes these foreign substances possess narcotic or other dangerous qualities, as is the case with the Trebizond honey, which causes headache, vomiting, and even a kind of intoxication in those who eat it. This quality it derives from the flowers of a species of rhododendron (Azalea pontica), from which the honey is partly extracted.