The culture of the sugar cane has become an object of the greatest importance; it is a great source of wealth both to the cultivators and the vendors, and also to the taxes of governments who levy an import on it.
INDIGENOUS SUGAR.
It has long been thought that tropical heat was not needed to form sugar. About 1740 Morgroff discovered that many plants of the temperate zones, and among others the beet contained it.
Towards the beginning of the nineteenth century, circumstances having made sugar scarce, and consequently dear, the government made it an object for savants to look for it.
The idea was successful, and it was ascertained that sugar was found in the whole vegetable kingdom; that it existed in the grape, chestnut, potato, and in the beet especially.
This last plant became an object of the greatest culture, and many experiments proved that in this respect, the old world could do without the new. France was covered with manufactories, which worked with different success, and the manufacture of sugar became naturalized; the art was a new one which may any day be recalled.
Among the various manufactories, the most prominent was that established at Passy, near Paris, by Mr. Benjamin Delassert, a citizen, the name of whom is always connected with the good and useful.
By means of a series of extensive operations, he got rid of all that was doubtful in the practice, and made no mystery of his plan of procedure, even to those who were his rivals. He was visited by the head of the government, and was ordered to furnish all that was needed at the Tuilleries.
New circumstances, the restoration of peace, having again reduced colonial sugar to a lower price, the French manufacturers lost the advantages they had gained. Many, however, yet prosper, and Delassert makes some thousands every year. This also enables him to preserve his processes until the time comes when they may again he useful. [Footnote: We may add, that at the session for the general encouragement of national industry, a medal was ordered to be presented to M. Crespel, a manufacturer of arrus, who manufactures every year one hundred and fifty thousand pounds of beet sugar, which he sells at a profit, even—when Colonial sugar is 2 francs 50 centimes the kilogramme. The reason is, that the refuse is used for distillation, and subsequently fed out to cattle.]
When beet sugar was in the market, party men, up-starts and fools, took it into their heads that its flavor was unpleasant, and some even said it was unhealthy.