Democratic Sentinel, Volume 20, Number 45, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 November 1896 — FACTS ABOUT SUGAR, [ARTICLE]

FACTS ABOUT SUGAR,

Sugar exists in the sap or leaves of nearly two hundred different kinds of trees. Gibbon says that sugar was first brought from Asia to Europe A. 1). 025. Some writers say that there is a variety of sugur cane indigenous to America. The word “caramel” is of Greek origin, and signifies simply black honey. Leavulose is that sugar most liberally found in Ironey and various fruits. The longest run in candy has been made by chocolate creams and caramels. Etymologists declare that the sugar cane has 227 varieties of insect enemies. Sugar is boiled, more or less, for candy, according to the kind to be made. Maltose is that variety of sugar produced by the action of diastase on starch. It is said that the dark varieties of sugar cane resist disease better than the light. It is said that in France the production of beet root averages eleven tons per acre. In 1803 there were eight.v-one sugar estates in the delta of the Mississippi alone. Candy stores located in the neighborhood of schools generally do a thriving business. The cultivation of sugar extended from India to Persia some time In the ninth century. It is said by botanists that sugar cane is not found growing wild in any part of the world. Preserved fruits, in a state fit to be eaten, have been taken from the ruiui of Herculaneum. The sugar cane is now cultivated In every part of Africa that has been explored by whites. For caramels and other dark caudles the brown sugar is almost exclusively employed. Manltose is a peculiar sugar found in mushrooms aud one or two other vegetables. Fat pork, baked in honey, was a favorite confection among the ladies in the days of Horace. 'The sugar cane is a variety of grass whose saccharine properties have been developed by cultivation. The "sweet ear*” mentioned in Isaiah xliii; 24, is supposed by some critics to mean sugar cane. Cane sugar, heated and treated with chlorate of potash, forms a detonating mixture of great intensity. Nearchus, the Admiral of Alexander the Great, noted the growth of the sugar cane in ludia B. C. 325.