AGRICULTURE.

Colonist, Volume XVI, Issue 1660, 15 August 1873, Page 5 (Supplement)

AGRICULTURE.

SUGAR FROM MELONS.

At ttie Ballarat Farmers' Club, Mr. Bacchus read a short paper on the manufacture of sugar from melons. In Hungary and Italy, sugar, he said, is made extensively from melons, which, while they can be produced at much less cost, yield a larger per centage of sugar than sugar beet. The cultivation is less expensive, inasmuch as it is not necessary to cultivate the whole ,of the ground between the rows. The fruit is clean, and retires no dressing and trimming before being ground down into pulp, while the surplus seeds yield an oil reputed to be superior in point of quality to that of the olive, and sufficient in quantity to pay half the cost of producing the crop. As a farm crop the melon is farther credited with leaving the whole of the saline and alkaline salts in the soil, while the beet exhausts it of these substances, and their presence in the Byrup tends to prevent the crystalisation of the 'saccharine matter. Altogether the claims of the melon as a Bugar-pruduciog crop were placed in a very favorable light by Mr. Bacchus, who is of opinion that " nothing stands in the way of farmers going into melon growing and sugar making."— Guardian.