from the earth or animal kingdom, are polarized light to the right, whereas the more intimately connected with the cure solutions of the chemical sugars rotate and prevention of diseases, than those to the left. I have proved by direct exsubstances called drugs or medicines periment, that fresh cane juice is death they require the same careful study; and destruction to certain animalculæ, being also more intimately connected particularly those called the rotifera, with mind, the disposition, and moral from their seeming to revolve like qualities. Thus medicine becomes, from wheels. When fed on carmine, and necessity, an associate of agriculture, as viewed through Prof. Riddell's inverted it must teach the properties of the vari- microscope, they were compared by a ous agricultural products, and their in- bystander to Tom Thumb steamboats, fluences on the mind and body. If it as an apt comparison, from the rapid vibrapires no higher than to a knowledge of tion of the cilia, looking like the movea few drugs, it is not the godlike science ment of the paddle-wheels of a steamof medicine, but mere quackery. That boat under headway. The scientific the science of medicine, properly so- name is euchlanis. (See Pritchard's Incalled, can throw much light on the fusorial Animalcules, London, 1852.) qualities and properties of sugar, and Other animalculæ were fancifully comthe natural history of the cane plant, no pared to bears in a cane-brakeone will question, who has looked into (leucophry's patula of Pritchard. The its archives. The few scraps of know- substance like cane being the ocillaria ledge which my imperfect acquaintance of Riddell.) with that science, which I have not half mastered, has enabled me to pick up, are communicated as a duty, hoping that they may be of some benefit to southern agriculture, and promote the public good. To go where duty calls, regardless of the good or evil on the way, I fain would make a rule of action. The writing of this paper I conceive to be a duty, and in its performance nothing else is looked to but the duty itself, or I would not write it, knowing it will be used to my prejudice, as a proof that I am a politician, and, of course, do not know how to give quinine and calomel.

The professor fed them with various matters, which they devoured with the same rapacity as the ravenous beasts of the forest devour their food. They were tried with human blood, which they gobbled down with a keen relish. At length a little fresh cane juice was put among them, and it killed the whole of them in a few seconds, as if it had been a clap of thunder. Prof. Riddle, myself, and all present, were greatly astonished at the result of the experiment, which was repeated several times with the same effect. He tried to re-animate them, but failed. Other nameless animalculæ, resembling tape-worms, broke into two parts when touched with the cane juice, and each part soon died.

I find, from the records of medicine, that long ago it has been ascertained, that, at a very small expense of time and trouble, in latitudes below thirty-five de- Few or no insects feed upon the juice grees, the cane tops can be so arranged of the cane. It has been supposed, that over the ratoons as to protect them from an insect invisible to the naked eye, the the hardest frosts. There is also a re- aphis of Linnæus, so destructive some cently discovered scientific truth, which years to entire crops of cane in the West has an important bearing on the practi- Indies, feeds upon the juice, producing cability of greatly extending the profi- the disease called the blast. But it is table culture of the cane in a northern direction. It is, that the sugar in cane juice is a vital product, or at least subject to the same laws as fibrin and other vital products of the kind. The saccharine matter, in other fruits, is produced by chemical affinities and not by vital actions; whereas that contained in the cane is formed by vital laws, as muscle is, and not by chemical agencies, as in other plants.

This vital product called cane sugar, is found to rotate the plane of polarization of

more probable, from the experiments of the Rev. L. Guilding, that the blast is caused by the insects feeding upon the leaves, the proper lungs of the plant. and which do not contain an atom of cane sugar. He advised the dead and injured leaves to be stripped off, which was found to be so effectual, that the Ceres gold medal was awarded him for the advice. (See vol. 46. Transactions of the Society for the Encouragement of the Arts, &c. St. Vincent.)

There is in some of the West India

Nutritive Qualities of the Sugar-cane.

islands, and also in Louisiana, a kind of grub, called the borer, which does more or less damage to the cane; but it is destroyed by the Rev. L. Guilding's process. It is bred in the leaves and bores into the rings of the joints of the cane. These rings contain mucilage and gummy matter, not sugar, which is deposited in the cells of the pithy substance between the rings. The ants are often seen to be very busy in the cane field, as they are everywhere; but none except the white ant, occasionally met with in the West Indies, seem to do any damage to the plant. The overseers look upon the little ant, the formica omnivera of Linnæus, as a protector of the cane plant from the depredations of other insects. But it is protected by a higher law, which enacts that the juice, so wholesome and nutritious for all warm-blooded animals, shall be poisonous and destructive to the cold-blooded, including animalculæ.

Thus we learn from Magendie and other medical authors, that it will kill worms, toads and lizards, whether applied externally or given internally. But that pure cane juice and the sugar contained in it, is extremely wholesome and nutritious to warmblooded animals, there is abundant proof. Dr. Rush says, that "sugar affords the greatest quantity of nourishment in a given quantity of matter of any subject in nature." Dr. Benj. Franklin long ago discovered that the virtue of certain nostrums resided entirely in the sugar they contained. Dr. Cullen asserts that the free use of sugar prevents malignant fevers. The French physicians were the first to discover, that good sugar would cure the scurvy and that bad sugar would produce it. Dr. Fothergill and Sir John Pringle ascertained that the plague never visits those countries where good sugar is liberally used as a diet. Dr. Tronchin owed his great celebrity to eau sucré, his principal remedy for most of the complaints he was called on to treat. The famous Dr. Dutrone considered good cane sugar" as the panacea of life, the invigorator of infancy, the restorer of health, the renovator of old age, and the best thing to soften the skin and to improve the complexion."

Travelers inform us, that those around the throne of the king of Cochin-China are compelled to eat a certain portion of sugar or sugar-cane daily, in order to preserve their good looks. I knew a

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widow lady, the owner of a plantation north of the thirty-second parallel of latitude, who had always a large patch of sugar cane, ostensibly for the benefit of the negro children; but perhaps also for her own benefit, as the older she got the younger she looked. She may have looked into the history of Cochin-China; at any rate her success in growing excellent cane, so far north, was one fact which convinced me, that there must be some error in the prevalent opinion in regard to the climate most suitable for the cane culture.

Cane sugar, or that essential salt of pure cane juice scientifically called dextrogyrate sugar, from its solution rotating polarized light to the right, being a vital product, like flesh and blood, is governed by similar laws as soon as vitality is extinguished. The same rules and principles which apply to the preservation of the flesh of slaughtered animals, apply with all their force to the making of good sugar. Perfect cleanliness and dispatch are even more necessary in making good sugar than good pork. Cold weather, to prevent the rapid decomposition from occurring, which always takes place in the juice in hot, moist weather, if not immediately con verted into crystallized sugar, is as necessary when the canes are cut as when hogs are killed. We often hear of hard frosts injuring the cane. It is not the frost or cold weather, but the warm weather after the frost, which does the damage. The hardest freeze will not hurt ripe cane, providing it be ground before a thaw, and immediately converted into sugar. In this it resembles the flesh of slaughtered animals. It is not the freeze, but the thaw, which would spoil the meat if left uncured. Hence the reason of the remarkable fact, that better sugar is made in Louisiana than in the West Indies; and better high up in the central portion of the state, where the cold is more uniform, than low down on the southern border, where the rains are more frequent and the thaws more rapid, spoiling the juice before it can be converted into sugar.

No other saccharine matter than dextrogyrate or vital sugar, rotating to the right, is contained in mature healthy cane But as soon as the canes are cut, whether the juice be expressed or not, chemical changes begin to occur, if the weather be hot and moist, in the saccharine liquor,

month in the year and ground at any time which suits the convenience of the planter. But this, according to Porter, Wray, and the best authorities, is no advantage at all, because all those who pursue the practice of planting at any time and grinding at any time, make the most indifferent crops and the most inferior sugar. Within the tropics, or below the region of frost, the dry season has to be chosen for grinding, and the planting season has to be chosen with a view of giving the young plant the ben efit of the rainy season. In Louisiana, the grinding or rolling season begins with the first cold or frosty weather and ends

unless the sugar be speedily separa- fact that the cane can be planted every ted from the foreign substances with which it is mixed by lime water. Instead of putrifying, like dead animal matter, fermentation takes place, and the dextrogyrate is converted into a lavagy rate, or chemical sugar rotating to the left. In common language this is called molasses, or uncrystallizable sugar.The refiner's art can convert it into glucose, and make it assume the solid crystalline form, looking pretty and white, and rotating to the right again; but no art can ever re-convert it into good, healthy, and nutritious cane-sugar. Louisiana molasses consists mostly of dextrogyrate sugar, in the form of syrup; while the West India article is mostly on or before Christmas. The quicker composed of lævagy rate or uncrystallizable sugar, the product of fermentation. Hence, for table use, Louisiana has nearly driven the West India molasses out of

the market.

There is a popular error, very prevalent, that because the cane, when planted, will continue to produce ratoon cane for twenty years or more in the West Indies, without planting the same land again, that those islands possess a decided advantage over any of our southern states, where the cane will only ratoon three or four years and requires to be planted every fourth year. But this is only a theoretical and not a practical advantage. The practice in the West Indies, particularly on the thin soils and on old estates, is to plant the same land every third year; whereas in Louisiana the common practice is to plant only every fourth year. (See Porter on the Sugar Cane, 2d London edition, 1843.) There can be no practical advantage to the West India planter, in the fact that cane will ratoon for a greater number of years in the tropical than in the temperate zone, as no labor is saved-the cane having to be planted as often in the one as in the other by those wanting to make good crops. The tropical planter, who depends upon the ratoon cane, after the fourth year loses more sugar than would twice pay the value of the labor saved. On fresh rich land the ratoons will give a tolerable yield the fifth or sixth yearbut, on most of the land in the West Indies, great loss is sustained if the cane be not planted even oftener than is found necessary in Louisiana.

Another supposed advantage of the tropical planter over the American, is the

the grinding season is over the better. Cold weather matures the cane and prevents what is called the second growth, so apt to spoil the sugar in tropical climates, and even in Louisiana, if the autumn be hot, cloudy, and moist, instead of cold, dry and frosty. The cold of October, November and December, so much dreaded by the theorist, and which poli ticians, opposed to the acquisition of Cuba, or any territory further South, use as a bugbear to frighten our people with a belief that they never could compete, successfully, in making sugar with the inhabitants of hotter countries, if admitted into the Union on an equal footing with us,-is the very thing which every planter and overseer begins to pray for, from the middle of October onward, until the cane is manufactured into sugar. Cold is, therefore, an advantage, instead of a disadvantage; and if sugar can be made cheaper in the East Indies, or any where else, it is because labor is cheaper, and the laborers are not fed and clothed so well as the Louisiana negroes.

The people of the United States, particularly our politicians, editors, reviewers, lawyers, divines, merchants and ag riculturists, seem to be acquainted with every art and science, every product of the soil, and every branch of industry, better than with sugar, or the habits and nature of the plant from which it is produced. Medical standard authorities are seldom consulted by the classes just named: hence, physicians ought to be heard.

The superiority of Louisiana sugar is not attributed to its true cause-superiority of soil and climate; but to some superiority in the culture of the cane,

Louisiana Sugar, the best in the World.

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and its manufacture into sugar. The England, if the statesmen, gentry, and fact is, however, that, with a few excep- nobility of that island did not look upon it tions, Louisiana is behind instead of as a device calculated to serve their purahead of most other sugar-growing coun- pose, in turning public sentiment against tries, in machinery and the facilities af- that species of American labor, whose forded by art and science for the produc- products come in competition with those tion of sugar; so says Prof. M'Culloh. The produced in the immense colonial postext-book of most of the sugar-makers of sessions of Great Britain, in the east, and Louisiana was published in 1732, the throughout the world. Happily, howyear that Washington was born. Most ever, for the interests of mankind, Amerof them have no book at all, but make icans are beginning to perceive that sugar by the traditional knowledge de- British East India philanthropy for Amerrived from the Spanish work above al- ican negroes consists in a desire to monoluded to. The American plow has polize those rich Southern staple commobeen made to supersede much of the hoe dities-the products of negro labor, by work in the culture of the cane, and the tying the negro's hands, under the name steam engine has been substituted in the of freedom, and sending him back to sugar mill for horse-power; but, in other that barbarism, want and wretchedness, respects, few or no improvements, until from which the patriarchal government, a very recent period, and only very par- called slavery, rescued him. A few of tially adopted, have been made upon the our planters, however, are beginning to Spanish practice in vogue a century and avail themselves of the advantages to be a half ago, while the English in the East derived from pressing into the service of Indies and the West, Demerara, Mauri- the sugar interest the science of meditius, Australia, and throughout every col- cine, and the modern discoveries in the ony where cane will grow, have pressed arts and sciences, so long in the hands into their service all the improvements of the English and French. They have in the arts and sciences, and encouraged even improved on the French and Engmen of learning and genius, by the most lish in the art of manufacturing sugar. tempting rewards, to lend their aid to The best sugar in the world is now made that extensive association of nobles, ple- in Louisiana, by what is called "the first beians, priests and politicians, who are process," directly from the fresh cane leagued together to monopolize the su- juice, nothing but Avequin's lime water gar culture, and to reap all the profits to being used as a clarifier. In three or be derived from the most valuable agri- four days, a perfectly pure, crystallized cultural product the earth produces, the white sugar is manufactured, drained, Americans have been standing still, un- dried, and put up ready for market, from conscious that they occupy the best su- the fresh juice, as it runs from the mill. gar region on the globe, and have only Lapice, Armat, Lesseps, Degruy, Levois, to adopt the modern improvements in Zeringue, Hulett, Urquhart, Lanfear, the culture and manufacture of the cane Morgan, Davenport, Benjamin, Packto gain at once the prize, which Great wood, are a few of those who are making Britain and the East India Company sugar according to the most approved have, for more than half a century, been method, and who have added many imstraining every nerve to obtain. It was provements themselves. Their method to encourage the culture of the cane and is spreading among the planters throughcotton plant in India, and to set one hun- out the state, and will not only supersede dred and fifty millions of people to work the old (1732) Spanish method, which for a few in a distant island, that slave converts a large portion of the vital into labor in the West Indies was abolished. chemical, sickly sugar, but will carry the culture of the cane to 32% north, and perhaps further. With a few year's governmental encouragement to the sugar interest, to enable our planters to provide themselves with the improved machinery, such as is now in successful operation on the plantations of the abovenamed gentleman, America would drive the East and West India sugar out of market, and greatly benefit mankind,

To prevent America from continuing to be a competitor in tropical products, an organized system of agitation, about the time of West India emancipation, was set on foot in England by the East India Company, to overthrow slave labor in the cotton and sugar growing states of the union.

The disgusting work, Uncle Tom's Cabin, would never have been reprinted, or a dozen copies sold, in moral

by giving them the purest, most wholesome, and nutritious article of diet the earth produces.

is hastened by the cold weather. The canes roasted in the fire, and the juice sucked while it is hot, is an excellent Those who wish to test the practica- remedy for coughs and bad colds. The bility of growing good cane in any lati- juice eaten with parched corn, is a poptude in the United States below thirty- ular and valuable remedy for dyspepsia. five degrees, should plant the cane at the Nature seems to have implanted so same time that Indian corn is planted in strong a love for cane juice in children, the particular latitude where the experi- as if it were on purpose to defend them ment is made. Good rich land should against the evils produced by decayed be selected. That which produces the teeth and worms. Whether sugar be best corn will generally produce the best made from the juice or nut, a patch of cane. The cultivation of the two plants cane, on every plantation where it will is very nearly the same. In the vicinity come to maturity, would be more than of New-Orleans the cane is planted in worth the ground it may occupy and the January or February, and comes up ear- trouble of cultivation. Such experiments ly in March. In about 71 months from would also do much in determining the the time of sprouting, it begins to mature important agricultural question: “ How sufficiently to be cut and converted into far north the culture of the cane plant can sugar. In higher latitudes its maturity be profitably extended in the United States?"

ART. II.-SALUBRITY OF CITIES RESTORED BY THE INTRODUCTION OF PURE AIR.

[SEVERAL years ago (April, 1842,) there appeared a paper in the Southern Quarterly Review, entitled "Refrigeration and Ventilation of Cities," which was attributed to Dr. Gurrie, of Florida. The writer concluded with these words-" While it must be conceded that we are able to cool a city to any degree required by the habits, comfort and health of its inhabitants, it must also be acknowledged that we have the capacity to regulate the quantity of moisture it may hold in solution, and thus diminish, and probably remove, two fertile sources of disease in all climates." The mode of effecting these results he proposes is by the construction of machinery for the compression of air. "We propose," he says, "to effect the compression of air by means of water, wind, or steam-power, into suitable reservoirs in the suburbs of cities, and thence to transmit it through conduits, like water or gas, so that it may be distributed and set free in the houses, and even in the streets and squares of the city."

The paper which we now publish contains many views which are equally novel, and as they relate to a matter of much public interest in the South and West, we give them a place, remarking at the same time that the germs of many a great truth lie often at the bottom of what seems at first sight but speculation, and that the head of the corner has often been constructed from the once rejected stone of the builder. We are willing to give our contributor a hearing, and to open, through our pages, the discussion of the subject to the scientific.]-EDITOR.

Impure air being the great fountain of disease, more than any, perhaps all other causes, I have felt that this rock from which the waters of bitterness have so long and copiously flowed, has been too much neglected by the learned. Analysis has failed to detect the subtle poison lurking in this universal fluid; the most powerful microscope has been unable to discover the invisible arrows of death, constantly flying on the wings of the wind; and though chemistry professes, I believe, to be able to disinfect the universal element, when tainted by unsalubrious substances, yet it has been put to but little practical use in protect

ing mankind from the evils of a contaminated atmosphere.

The efforts of the scientific having been so barren of results, it seems that the only hope of relief for suffering humanity is in simple, but untried mechan ical means.

Writing from a secluded district, remote from books, I recollect having read, but cannot now tell where, how the London club-houses are ventilated with a salubrious atmosphere, by first passing through water the air intended for cir culation in their crowded apartments. This is the only instance which I now remember to have heard of purification