REVIEWS 511 



The Sugar-beet in America. By F. S. Harris, Ph.D., Director and Agronomist, 

 Utah Agricultural Experiment Station, and Professor of Agronomy, Utah 

 Agricultural College. Rural Science Series. [Pp. xviii -f- 342.] (New 

 York: The Macmillan Company, 1919. Price $2.25 net.) 



The annual consumption of sugar throughout the world has increased within the 

 last century from about a million tons to twenty times this quantity. Of this 

 amount somewhat less than half is obtained from the sugar-beet, so that the sugar- 

 beet industry is one of considerable importance in regard to food supply, and this 

 account of it by Prof. Harris will be read with much interest. 



The beet-sugar industry consists of three distinct parts : the production of beet 

 seed, beet-growing, and sugar-making. The present volume is chiefly devoted to 

 sugar-beet growing, and a full practical account is given of the agricultural 

 practice of beet raising in North America in all its aspects. Special attention 

 should be directed to the very interesting chapter on the production of beet-seed. 

 There is also a short chapter on sugar-making in which the principles of this part 

 of the beet-sugar industry are set out, and another on sugar-cane. The principles 

 underlying sugar-beet growing differ in many important details from those 

 underlying the raising of most other crops : thus, for instance, in the matter of 

 seed in the case of a cereal all the crop raised from it can be used whether the 

 yield is high or low ; but in the case of beet a low yield of sugar in the root may 

 mean that it is impossible to extract the sugar at a profit, and the crop is valueless 

 for the purpose for which it was raised. It is shown how these special con- 

 siderations which apply to beet raising necessitate particularly good farming, and 

 so the general level of agricultural practice is raised. For this and other reasons, 

 such as the stability it gives to agriculture, its educational value, and the greater 

 degree of national independence it ensures, the author is enthusiastic over the 

 value of the sugar-beet industry for the welfare of the community. 



On page 23 the author gives the native habitat of Beta maritima as the 

 Mediterranean. As a matter of fact, this plant is not only common on the English 

 coasts but extends as far north as the Baltic. This is an inexactitude which 

 occurs elsewhere in American writings. In Appendix A there is given a biblio- 

 graphy containing a list of some 250 papers relating to the sugar-beet. This is, 

 of course, a valuable collection of references, but it is regrettable that they should 

 all be American, as the greatest amount of work on the sugar-beet has been done 

 in Europe, and most of this will have some bearing on sugar-beets independently 

 of where they are grown. Although a few expressions, such as "Considerable of 

 the remainder came from Russia through Siberia," may not sound very happy to 

 the English ear, the book is brightly written, and maintains the standard of the 

 series to which it belongs. 



W. S. 



The Carbohydrate Economy of Cacti. By Herman Augustus Spoehr. 

 [Pp. 79.] (Washington : Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1919) 



The experimental attack on the problems of carbon assimilation has been 

 made in several well-defined and rather distinct ways. There is, for example, 

 the purely chemical method of Willstatter directed to an understanding of 

 the chemistry of the leaf pigments, the rather physico-chemical method of 

 F. F. Blackman, which aims at investigating quantitatively the influence of the 

 different factors necessary for carbon assimilation, and there is the chemical 



