Alexander the Great, in that remarkable expedition
which did so much to make the West acquainted with
the East, is probably responsible for the first knowledge
Europe had of sugar, for it is said that his admiral, Near-
chus, on the return of his army to Greece B. Cc. 324, brought
with him as a rare and delectable delicacy a quantity of
sugar candy.
The method of making “candy” appears to have been
known and extensively practised in China from a very
remote antiquity, and it was sent in large quantities to


India.
Thus we find candy, so frequently condemned as vain


and frivolous, a most venerable and historical commodity,
the forerunner of the tremendous sugar industry in the
western world at the present time.
Nearchus’s candy was not the varied and delectable
confection compounded by the artists of the present day,
but probably a very simple sweet.
Theophrastus, 320 B. c., calls sugar a sort of honey ex-
tracted from canes or reeds ; and Dioscorides in the second


Structure, Habits, and Products 11


century informs us that a sort of concrete honey, called
sugar, is found upon canes which grow in India and
Arabia Felix.
This sugar, we are told, was in consistence like salt, being,
like it, brittle between the teeth.
“Sugar” came to be a synonym for everything that had
a sweet taste, hence the acetate of lead is called ‘sugar of
lead.” :

It was not until about the seventeenth century that sugar
became an article of common use in Europe. Up to that
time it was used chiefly as a medicine, or by the rich as a
delicacy at feasts upon very special occasions.
