To free it from these constituents, and enable it to yield pure and crystallisable sugar, the liquor, on entering the boiling-house, is received into the first of three clarifiers, of the capacity of from three hundred to a thousand gallons each.  Here it is subjected to the action of lime-water, which checks the tendency to fermentation, and neutralises any free acid which it may contain.  “The common defection process,” says Mr. Fownes, “in careful hands, seems susceptible of little improvement.  Many other substances than lime have been proposed and tried with more or less success, some of which, in particular states of the cane juice, may prove very useful; but, for general purposes, nothing seems to answer so well as neutralisation by lime, either in the form of lime-water or milk of lime, added until the slightest possible tendency to alkalinity, as ascertained by delicate reddened litmus paper, is perceived.  The juice should be somewhat heated before the lime is added, and afterwards raised quite to the boiling point.  The fire is then to be withdrawn, and the whole allowed to rest a short time.”  Such is Mr. Fownes’ description of the process of clarification; to which I will venture to add, upon the authority of those who have experienced its good effects, the joint use of the mucilage of the Guazuma ulmifolia, or gun-stock tree, as it is popularly termed in Nevis from the use to which its timber has been applied.  This is the bastard cedar of Jamaica, or Orme d’Amerique, and Bois d’Orme of the French, which may be found described by Lunan, in the first volume of his “Hortus Jamaicensis,” page 59, under the name of Bubroma Guazuma.

This tree presents in the interval between its outer bark of sap-wood, a mass of fibrous matter about half an inch in thickness, richly impregnated with mucilage, which is obtained by macerating the fibrous mass, conveniently divided into small shreds, for about twelve hours, in warm water, in the proportion of about two handsful to eight gallons of water.  Of this solution, which is of a light, straw color, and somewhat thickened, one gallon is to be added for every hundred gallons of cane juice, after the clarifier has been charged with the proper quantity of lime-water, and has become lukewarm.  The mixture should then be stirred, and afterwards allowed to settle till the scum has risen to the surface.  The fire must next be cautiously and gradually raised to the point of boiling, when it must again be slackened, and the whole left to stand for about forty minutes, by which time the mass of feculencies will have risen to the surface, when the clear liquor underneath may either be drawn off by a siphon or cock; the whole may be filtered as Mr. Fownes recommends, by which means the liquor would be more effectually clarified, and much, if not all, the subsequent labour of skimming dispensed with.  The matter remaining on the filter may be employed, either as a ferment in the still-house, or added to