had no acquaintance, stating that he had used the bisulphate of lime with complete success; and whilst I was with him he again received letters from the same person, stating that by its use he had not only improved the quality of sugar, but had raised the return to 9 per cent. of the weight of cane.  From the letters which I saw, the process appears to have been tried on a very large scale, with the advantage of filters and a vacuum pan.  Where the old mode of leaving half the dirt with the sugar, and boiling up to a temperature of 340 degrees or thereby, is continued, I fear there is not much chance of either bisulphate or anything else making any very great improvement.

    The use of bisulphate of lime is patented in England and the
    colonies, but I believe I may state the charge for the right of
    using it will be made extremely moderate.

The points which appeared to me worthy of remark in visiting the beet-root sugar works are, the extreme care that nothing shall be lost—­the great attention paid to cleanliness in every part of the process, besides the particular care given to defecation.  No vessel is ever used twice without being thoroughly washed.  Such a thing as the employment of an open fire in any part of the manufacture is quite unknown.  Everything is done by steam, of a pressure of from 4 to 5 atmospheres.  In the more recently started works, the evaporation is entirely carried on in vacuum.  In some of the older works copper evaporators, heated by coils of steam piping, and having covers, with chimneys to carry off the vapor, are still used; but of the eight works I visited I only saw them in use in one of them, and they are nowhere used excepting to evaporate to the point when the second filtration takes place.

The coolers I saw were invariably made of iron, and varied in depth from 2 to over 6 feet.  These very deep vessels are used for the crystallization of sugar, made of the fourth, fifth and sixth re-boilings of molasses, which requires from three to six months.

One thing struck me forcibly in going over the French and Belgian works; it was the extreme liberality with which I was allowed to go over every part of them; to remain in them as long as I pleased; had all my inquiries answered, and every explanation given; in most striking contrast to the grudging manner in which I have been trotted over some of the refineries in England, as if those who showed them were afraid I should gain any information on the subject of their trade.

Mr. H. Colman, speaking of the agriculture of the Continent, gives some information he obtained on the comparative cost of producing beet and cane sugar.  A hectare (two and a half acres) produces, in the Isle of Bourbon, about 76,000 kilogrammes (a kilogramme is nearly two and one-fifth pounds) of cane, which will give 2,200 kilogrammes of sugar, and the cost for labor is 2,500 francs.  A hectare of beet root produces 40,000 kilogrammes of roots, which yield 2,400 kilogrammes of sugar, and the expense of the culture is 354 francs.  The cost of the cane sugar in this case is 27 centimes, and of the beet sugar 14 centimes only, per kilogramme.