171 
SUGAR. 
Chap. I. 
SECT. I. 
OE SUCAR. 
SUGAR, which at present forms so important an ar 
Eietory. 
ticle in our food, seems to have been known at a very 
early period to the inhabitants of India and China. 
But Europe probably owes its acquaintance with it 
to the conquests of Alexander the Great. For ages 
after its introduction into the west, it was used only 
as a medicine ; but its concumption gradually increased; 
and during the time of the Crusades, the Venetians, 
who brought it from the east, and distributed it to the 
northern parts of Europe, carried on a lucrative com 
merce with sugar. It was not till after the discovery 
of America, and the extensive cultivation of sugar in 
the West Indies, that its use in Europe, as an article of 
food, became general *. 
Sugar is obtained from the arundo faccharifera, or. Howob 
tained. 
sugar cane. The juice of this plant is pressed out and 
boiled rapidly in large vessels to the consistence of a 
syrup. On cooling, it partly concretes into fine cry 
stalline grains like sand, which do not cohere together; 
and remains partly in the state of a black thick syrup. 
This last is made to run off, and is well known under 
the name of molasser. The crystalline grains have a 
* See Falconer's Sketch of the History of Sugar, Manchester Memoirs, 
iv. 291. and Mozeley's History of Sugar.