The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 1,257 pages of information about The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom.

The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 1,257 pages of information about The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom.

These are extraordinary statements, and will be looked at by the political economist and the philanthropist with great interest.  There are few of the northern states of Europe, or of the United States, which might not produce their own sugar; and when we take into account the value of this product, even in its remains after the sugar is extracted, for the fattening of cattle and sheep, and of course for the enrichment of the land for the succeeding crops, its important bearing upon agricultural improvement cannot be exaggerated.

According to M. Peligot, the average amount of sugar in beets is 12 per cent.; but, by extraction, they obtain only 6 per cent.  The cane contains about 18 per cent. of saccharine matter, but they get only about 71/2.  The expense of cultivating a hectare of beets, according to Dombasle, is 354 francs.  An hectare of cane, which produces 2,200 kilogrammes of sugar, in the Island of Bourbon, and only 2,000 in French Guiana, demands the labor of twelve negroes, the annual expense of each of whom is 250 francs, according to M. Labran.—­(Commission of Inquiry in 1840.)

Sugar has become not only an article of luxury, but of utility, to such a degree, that a supply of it constitutes an important article of importation, and is of national consequence.  For sugar the world has hitherto relied on the cane, with the exception of some parts of India, where the sugar palm yields it much more cheaply.  The sugar cane is, however, a tropical plant, and, of course, its cultivation must of necessity be limited to such hot countries.  France, during the wars of Napoleon, shut out from her Indian possessions or deprived of them, commenced making sugar from beets, and it proving unexpectedly successful and profitable, it has as we have just seen, extended not only over that empire, but nearly the whole of continental Europe, where it forms an important item in their system of cultivation and profit.  The manufacture has been attempted in the United States; but though the facts of the ease and certainty with which the beets may be grown and their great value for stock has been fully ascertained, still little progress in the production of sugar from them has been made there.

MAPLE SUGAR.

There are few trees in the American forest of more value than the maple (Acer saccharinum).  As an ornamental tree, it is exceeded by few; its ashes abound in alkali, and from it a large proportion of the potash of commerce is produced; and its sap furnishes a sugar of the best quality, and in abundance.  It likewise affords molasses and an excellent vinegar.  In the maple the sugar amounts to five per cent. of the whole sap.  There is no tree whose shape and whose foliage is more beautiful, and whose presence indicates a more generous, fertile, and permanent soil than the rock maple:  in various cabinet-work its timber vies with black walnut and mahogany for

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The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.