Sugar is a sweet granulated substance, which may be derived from many vegetable substances, but the chief source of which is the sugar cane. The other chief sources that supply it are the maple, beet-root, birch, parsnip, &c. It is extensively used all over the world. Sugar is supposed to have been known to the ancient Jews. It was found in the East Indies by Newcheus, Admiral of Alexander, 325 B.C. It was brought into Europe from Asia.
The art of sugar refining was first practised in England, in 1659, and sugar was first taxed by name by James II., 1685. Sugar is derived from the West Indies, Brazil, Surinam, Java, Mauritius, Bengal, Siam, the Isle de Bourbon, &c. &c. Before the introduction of sugar to this country, honey was the chief substance employed in making sweet dishes; and long after the introduction of sugar it was used only in the houses of the rich. The consumption in England in 1700 reached only 10,000 tons; in 1834 it had reached 180,000 tons. The English took possession of the West Indies in 1672, and in 1646 began to export sugar. In 1676 it is recorded that 400 vessels, averaging 150 tons, were employed in the sugar trade of Barbadoes. Jamaica was discovered by Columbus, and was occupied by the Spaniards, from whom it was taken by Cromwell, in 1656, and has since continued in our own possession. When it was conquered there were only three sugar plantations upon it. But they rapidly increased. Until the abolition of slavery in the West Indies, the production of sugar was almost exclusively limited to slave labour. (See [1226]).
Wheat, rye, barley, oats, millet, and maize, all belong to the natural order of grain-bearing plants. They all grow in a similar manner, and all yield starch, gluten, and a certain amount of phosphates. They are commonly spoken of as farinaceous foods.
"I clothed thee also with broidered work, and shod thee with badgers' skin, and I girded thee about with fine linen, and I covered thee with silk."—Ezekiel xvi.
From the Sacred writings we learn that unleavened bread was common in the days of Abraham. In the earlier periods of our own history, people had no other method of making bread than by roasting corn, and beating it in mortars, then wetting it into a kind of coarse cake. In 1596, rye bread and oatmeal formed a considerable part of the diet of servants, even in great families. In the time of Charles the First, barley bread was the chief food of the people. In many parts of England it was more the custom to make bread at home than at present. In 1804, there was not a single public baker in Manchester. In France, when the use of yeast was first introduced, it was deemed by the faculty of medicine to be so injurious to health that its use was prohibited under the severest penalties. Herault says that, during the siege of Paris by Henry the Fourth, a famine raged, and bread sold at a crown a pound. When this was consumed, the dried bones from the charnel house of the Holy Innocents were exhumed, and a kind of bread made therefrom. Bread-street, in London, was once a bread market. From the year 1266, it had been customary to regulate by law the price of bread in proportion to the price of wheat or flour at the time. This was called the assize of bread; but, in 1815, it was abolished. In the year 272 there was a famine in Britain so severe that people ate the bark of trees; forty thousand persons perished by famine in England in 310! In the year 450 there was a famine in Italy so dreadful that people ate their own children. A famine, commencing in England, Wales, and Scotland, in 954, lasted four years. A famine in England and France, in 1193, led to a pestilential fever, which lasted until 1195. In 1315 there was again a dreadful famine in England, during which people devoured the flesh of horses, dogs, cats, and vermin! In the year 1775, 16,000 people died of famine in the Cape de Verds. These are only a few of the remarkable famines that have occurred in the course of history. Let us thank God that we live in times of abundance, when improved cultivation, the pursuit of industry, and the settlement of the laws, render such a calamity as a famine almost an impossibility.