SUGAR, a sweet, crystallized sub stance manufactured from the expressed juice of various plants, especially from the sugar cane; also, any substance, more or less resembling sugar in any of its properties; as sugar of lead; figuratively, sweet, honeyed, or soothing words or flattery, used to disguise or hide some thing distasteful.
In chemistry, Cn (OH,) m, the generic name for a large number of bodies occur ring naturally in the animal or vegetable kingdom, or produced from glucosiaes by the action of ferments or dilute acids. They are all more or less soluble in water, and their solutions exert a rota tory action on polarized light. Some re duce alkaline solutions of copper while others either do not, or do so only to a limited extent. They may all be classed under two heads, viz., unfermentable sugars, as mannite, dulcite, sorbite, etc., and fermentable sugars, as cane sugar, glucose, maltose, etc. Cane sugar, Ci211220ii, called also saccharose, sucrose, and canose, is found in the juice of many grasses, in the sap of several trees, and in beet and several other roots. It is ex tracted most easily from sugar cane but on the Continent of Europe and also in the United States it is manufactured on a large scale from beet root. The ex
pressed juice is heated nearly to the boil ing point, and a small quantity of slaked lime added. The clear liquid which sepa rates from the coagulum is evaporated as rapidly as possible, and transferred into shallow vessels to crystallize Drained from the syrup or molasses, it yields the raw sugar of commerce. When further refined by treatment with animal char coal, poured into molds, and then dried in a stove, the product is loaf sugar. When the crystallization is allowed to proceed very slowly, sugar candy results. Moderately heated it melts, and solidi fies on cooling to an amorphous mass, familiar as barley sugar. Pure sugar separates from its solution in trans parent colorless crystals, having the fig ure of a modified monoclinic prism. Its crystals have a sp. gr. of 1.6. Heated above water is given off and a brown substance known as caramel re mains. Cane sugar is transformed into invert sugar by boiling in presence of dilute acids, mineral acting more rap idly than organic acids. Strong sulphuric acid completely decomposes cane sugar, and nitric acid converts it into saccharic acid. It turns a ray of polarized light to the right, Aj = 73.8.