in natural history, is properly the essential salt of the sugar-cane, as tartar is of the grape. See Chemistry, p. 161, and Saccharum.

This plant rises to eight, nine, or more feet high; the stalk, stalk, or cane, being round, jointed, and two or three inches in diameter at the bottom; the joints are three or four inches asunder, and in a rich soil more: the leaves are long and narrow, and of a yellowish green colour; as is also the stalk itself, the top of which is ornamented with a panicle, or cluster of arundinaceae flowers, two or three feet in length.

They propagate the sugar-cane, by planting cuttings of it in the ground in furrows, dug parallel for that purpose; the cuttings are laid level and even, and are covered up with earth; they soon shoot out new plants from their knots or joints: the ground is to be kept clear, at times, from weeds; and the canes grow so quick, that in eight, ten, or twelve months, they are fit to cut for making of sugar from them. The manner of doing it is thus: They cut off the reeds at one of the joints near the roots; they are then cleared of the leaves, and tied up in bundles, and sent to the mills, which are worked either by water or horses.

The sugar-mill is composed of three rollers of an equal size, and all armed with iron-plates, where the canes are to pass between them; only the middle roller is much higher than the rest, to give the larger sweep to the two poles to which the horses are yoked. This great roller in the middle is furnished with a cog full of teeth, which catch the notches in the two side-rollers, and force them about to bruise the canes, which pass quite round the great roller, and come out dry and squeezed from all their juice; which runs into a vessel or back under the mill, and is thence conveyed through a narrow spout into the first boiler.

After the juice is let out of the first vessel, it is received into another; in which it is boiled more briskly, and scummed from time to time with a large kind of spoon, pierced with holes to let the liquor through, while it retains the scum and foulness separated from it in boiling: towards the end of this boiling, they throw into it a strong lixivium of wood-ashes, with some quicklime among it: this greatly promotes the separation of the foulness that yet remains amongst it; and, after it has boiled some time with this addition, they strain it off. The scaces left in the cloths make a kind of wine, when fermented properly with water. The strained liquor, which is now tolerably clean, is let into a third boiler, in which it is boiled down to the consistence of sugar over a very brisk fire, the people who attend it continually stirring and scumming it.

Great caution is to be used that the boiling matter does not rise over the sides of the vessel, which would be of very dangerous consequence: they prevent this by taking up quantities of the boiling matter with a ladle, lifting it up high, and letting it run in again, and by now and then adding a small piece of batter, or fat of some kind, which takes down the bubbling almost instantaneously. They are very careful that no lemon-juice, or any other acid of that kind, comes near the vessels, a very small admixture of that being sufficient to keep the matter from granulating. When the liquor is boiled enough, which is known by its concreting on throwing a spoonful of it up into the air, it is then let out into a fourth vessel, under which there is a very gentle fire, only kept up that it may have leisure to granulate; when it has begun to granulate, it is let out of this last boiler into a kind of conic earthen vessels, open at both ends; the widest aperture is placed upwards, and the smaller end downwards, its aperture being stopped with a wooden plug. It is left in these vessels twenty-four hours to concrete: after this they are removed into sugar-houses, and are there arranged in regular order, with a vessel of earthen-ware under each; the plug is then taken out of the bottom aperture of each, and they are left in this condition for about forty days, that all the thick liquor, or molasses, may run from them: after they have stood thus long to drain of themselves, a quantity of clay is diluted, with water, into a thin paste; and this is poured on the top of every parcel of sugar in the vessels, so as to cover it two or three inches deep. This water, by degrees, all leaves the clay, and penetrating into the mass of sugar, runs through it, and carries off yet more of this foul thick liquid with it, into the vessels placed underneath to receive it.

When the clay is quite dry, it is taken off, and the first preparation of the sugar is now finished; they shake it out of the vessels, and, cutting it into lumps, which are of a dirty, brownish, or greyish colour, they put it up in hogheads, and other casks, under the name of grey or brown sugar. The sugar, in this state, ought to be dry, not unctuous, and to have no taste of burning. The liquor which has run from the sugar in standing, is boiled to a consistence, and sold under the name of molasses, or treacle; this affords, by fermentation, a very clean and good spirit.

This coarse sugar is afterwards refined to various degrees of purity by new solutions, and is sold at different prices, and under different names, according to the degree of purity it is brought to. Our sugar refiners first dissolve it in water, then clarify the solution by boiling with whites of eggs and despumation; and after due evaporation pour it into moulds; where the fluid part being drained off, and the sugar concreted, its surface is covered with moist clay, as before. The sugar thus once refined, by repetition of the process becomes the double-refined sugar of the shops. The candy-sugar, or that in crystals, is prepared by boiling down solutions of sugar to a certain pitch, and then removing them into a hot-room, with sticks placed across the vessel for the sugar to shoot upon: and these crystals prove of a white or brown colour, according as the sugar used in the process was pure or impure.