Vermont watchman and State journal. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1836-1883, 1881-01-26
HOme-Md,ie Sugar.

Professor Collier is coming " irow i5ng
land, and we hope to our own state, to tell
the people the results of his experiments in |
sugar making from sorghum and corn-stalks
last fall. From private correspondence we
know them to have been an entire success,
thoroughly confirming, on much larger
scale, the results of preceding years. New
ertheless there is good deal Of complaint
of failure among those who have, in various
parts of the country, been attempting to
make syrup, and especially sugar, from these
plants. Although the process is, to one who
has moderate amount of chemical knowl-
edge and of practice in sugar making, quite
a simple one, it is not one that will run it.
self. Probably three-fourths of those who
try, year after year, fail to make really first
class maple syrup and sugar. Sorghum or
corn syrup and sugar are not so easily made
as that from maple sap, and he who under
takes the work must be more of an expert
than one has to be who has such pure sac
charine juice to work with as maple sap is.
That hundreds, therefore, should fail in their
attempts, has very little significance along
side of the fact that dozens have succeeded.
Many of the hundreds probably will never
take the trouble to improve their methods.
They will find it more satisfactory to their
self-esteem to denounce the whole thing as
humbug. We have seen people who de-
clared that trying to raise chickens by put
ting eggs under sitting hen was hum
bug.
Mr.. j. A. Hedges, president of the Miss
issippi Valley Cain Growers Association,
writes to the Rural New Yorker that better
results have been obtained by most new be-
ginners than last year, although some have
made signal failures. He has been strenu-
ous in urging the necessity of experts skill
to make the production of sorghum sugar
profitable, and in an extensive tour of OBJ
servation he has always found that failures
were the results of ignorance, either in the
construction of apparatus, or the process of
converting the juice into sugar. Although
sugar-making is our object" he says, "there
have been more backsets caused by efforts
to teach men to make sugar before they had
learned to make syrup than from any other
msdirection. Those of most experience
readily admit that after good syrup is made
sugar-making is an easy matter" Is this
not exactly true in maple sugar manufac-
ture2
As an example of success and very large
product in syrup, we quote the report ol
Colonel Lamb of Skaneateles, New York
For three years he planted the Liberiar
cane, and realized good profit. This yea
he planted the Amber cane, and from few
feet less than one hundred rods of land haC
two hundred and seventy-ive gallons o
syrup weighing eleven pounds and fourteen
ounces per gallon. This is yield of fou
hundred and forty gallons to the acre o
syrup that sold readily at fifty cents pc
gallon.
A new variety of cane, richer in suga
than the Amber, but somewhat later, ha
been brought forward. 1t is called the Earl
Orange. Mr.. Hedges speaks very highly o
it, but if results approaching those of Co
onel Lamb may be depended on from tn
Amber, we should be satisfied to stick +