used in its place, since the sugar cane makes a sirup which is preferred by most people.
Analysis of Sorghum Sirup.—The average composition of ten samples of sorghum sirup of known purity is as follows:
Total solids, 76.0 percent
Water, 28.6 "
Ash, 4.0 "
Sucrose, 36.7 "
Reducing sugar, 26.6 "
Molasses.—The term "molasses" is properly applied to the saccharine product which is separated from sugar in the process of manufacture. It is well to clearly discriminate in the use of the term in order that no confusion or misunderstanding may arise. To this end the terms "sirup" and "molasses" may be contrasted. A sirup is the direct product of the evaporation of the juice of a sugar-yielding plant or tree without the removal of any of the sugar. The term molasses applies to the same process with the exception of the fact that sugar has been removed at least partially by crystallization and some kind of mechanical separation of the crystals from the remaining liquid. Molasses, therefore, to use a term employed in chemistry, may be considered the "mother liquid" which has produced the crystallization of the sugar. The production of molasses has already been sufficiently described in the article on sugar making. The molasses is either separated by gravitation as in the old style of drying sugar or, as at the present time, almost exclusively by centrifugal action. The molasses naturally contains all the substances in solution or suspension which are not retained upon the gauze of the centrifugal. It differs from the total mass of evaporated sugar liquid only in the fact that a large portion of the sucrose or crystallizible sugar has been separated. The sugar juices of the cane and sorghum contain considerable quantities of sugar of a kind different from sucrose or common sugar, namely, an invert sugar, a "reducing sugar," as it is called, which consists usually of about equal parts of dextrose and levulose. During the process of manufacture small portions of the sucrose are converted into sugar of this kind thus increasing its quantity. In the final crystallization there is always a portion of sugar uncrystallized remaining as a viscous liquid in contact with the crystallized particles. This natural invert sugar which is in the juice, the small portion formed from the sucrose during the process of manufacture, and the part of sucrose remaining uncrystallized in the mother liquid constitutes the molasses. In the washing of sugar the water which is used also passes into the molasses thus diluting it somewhat from its natural consistence. In the sugar refinery the molasses is made up of practically such materials as just mentioned, but inasmuch as the separation of the sugar is more complete the other portions of the molasses, namely, the mineral salts, particularly appear in a very much larger proportion than in the ordinary molasses as will be seen by the analysis of these bodies.
