or Melasses (in Portuguese Mel de açúcar or Melópo, from melatium, a low Latin derivative of mel, honey, signifying, according to Nonius, must concentrated to half its bulk), is the syrup or mother-water that is separated from the crystals or grains of raw sugar in the course of manufacture. It drips from those crystals like honey from the comb, a circumstance to which it no doubt owes its name, and especially to its likeness to honey in taste, consistency, general appearance, and uses. The name is sometimes given to treacle, which, as distinguished from molasses, is the syrup separated from the lowest boiling in refineries of sugar, or from the "bastard" sugar obtained in sugar-houses by boiling imported molasses. In France and elsewhere treacle and molasses bear indiscriminately the name molasse; in Germany that of syrup.

Molasses varies according to the colour, strength, and treatment of the sugar which yields it. Fine bright sugar yields fine bright molasses; weak sugar, viscid or weak molasses. Muscovado or unclayed sugar yields thick or heavy molasses; clayed sugar thin, but, when kept from becoming acid, strong molasses. By strong molasses is meant molasses capable of producing a large percentage of granulated sugar. The heaviest molasses, though containing less water, and therefore a greater percentage of saccharine matter, is not generally the strongest, its thickness being often connected with the presence of much grape-sugar and impurities. The best molasses is obtained in the earlier periods of the crop season, and before rains set in.

Molasses is usually of a dark-brown colour. St Croix, Molasses. Barbadoes, and Porto Rico, produce the finest, of that yellow or amber colour which is preferred. The progress of improvement in the making of sugar, for which there is still ample scope, may be expected to improve the colour, as well as reduce the proportion yielded, of this the less profitable extract from cane-juice.

Molasses is shipped in tight casks (called in this country punchcans; in Cuba and America, hogheads), containing from 9 to 15 cwt. each. The bungs are left out to give free vent to the fermentation to which it, particularly if strong and fresh, is subject on the voyage. Iron tanks have been used, but only to a very limited extent. The deposit of sugar which frequently settles at the bottom of the casks during the voyage is called foot.

Although molasses is produced wherever sugar is made, the only parts of the world which export it in any considerable quantity are the West India Islands, of which Cuba alone in 1856 contained 226,000 casks, mostly of large size, or two-thirds of the whole commerce in the article. Brazil, Mauritius, the British East Indies, Java, and the Philippines, which collectively supply about a third of the world's sugar, do not ship any quantity worth notice; yet they might do so profitably, notwithstanding length of voyage, if better means were devised to prevent waste and acidity.

Much molasses is converted into rum on the estates. Jamaica distills all its molasses. A great deal of what is sent to the United States of America, and (when grain is dear, or inferior molasses, chiefly clayed from Cuba, is cheap) some also of what is sent to the United Kingdom, finds its way to the distilleries, producing from 6½ to 7 or 8 gallons of proof spirits per cwt., unexceptionable in quality. Sugar is supposed to yield 11 to 11½ gallons per cwt. In the city of Boston alone, the chief seat of this branch of the trade, the quantity distilled was, for the years 1854-5-6, near 50,000 casks a year. The returns for the United Kingdom show 134,682 cwts. so used in 1856.

The laws of the United Kingdom prohibit the use of molasses in breweries, in order to maintain the duty on malt at its present high rate. For domestic brewing this material is allowed and is suitable, but it is not so used. There are several other ways in which it might be serviceable, but it is not used, because it is not sold here in retail; common treacle, which has a better consistency, and is also cheaper, or refiners' "golden syrup" (a finer sort of treacle), being kept by the grocers in preference. In the United States and British America molasses is largely used as an article of diet in its natural state. Molasses or treacle from beet-root sugar, an extract necessarily obtained in large quantities in the beet-sugar works of Europe, has an unpleasant vegetable flavour, and is employed for feeding cattle and for making alcohol and acetic acid.

The principal consumers in the United Kingdom are the refiners of Greenock, Liverpool, London, and Leith, who, by operations not yet benefited by modern science so much as may be hoped for, obtain from it a dark, or, as the case may be, a yellow sugar, resembling West India muscovado, the residue being treacle. Of 82,000 casks imported into the United Kingdom in 1856, half came to the seaports of Clyde, 25,000 to Liverpool, and 15,000 to London.

The magnitude of the molasses trade is further shown by the following figures:—The United States imported in each of the years 1854-5-6 above 25,000,000 gallons, or about 2,500,000 cwts., besides consuming its own growth, which in these years amounted to not much less. In the same years this kingdom imported an average quantity of 950,000 cwts. The remarkable progress of this trade is shown by comparing the imports into the kingdom in the years 1820-30-40, when they were only 39,991, 250,648, and 432,220 cwts. The increase is due to the greater indifference with which the planters regard the making of rum, to the enlargement of the sugar-boiling business in the chief northern ports of Britain, to the removal of the prohibitory duty, and to the vast extension of the growth of the cane, especially in the highly prosperous slave-labour Spanish colony of Cuba. It is worthy of notice that this "sweet" is used almost exclusively by the English-speaking countries of the world,—Great Britain, and the states and colonies to which she has given birth.

The present duty on molasses is 5s. per cwt., and the price, exclusive of duty, has ranged for some years between 7s. and 20s. per cwt., or about half the price in bond of the lowest sorts of sugar. In this country it is sold by weight; in the United States and the colonies by measure (the old gallon). An imperial gallon weighs from 13 to 14 lb. The specific gravity of molasses from muscovado sugar is about 1·370, and from clayed sugar 1·356.

A trade has lately arisen between Cuba and the United States in melado, which is cane-juice concentrated, or sugar with the molasses remaining unseparated from the crystallized portion. (See Sugar.) (R.A.M.)