406 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



valuable guide to many a young farmer, who is, perhaps, 

 groping along blindly, searching for new light, and ready to 

 accept the results of the experience of older men who have 

 passed through similar trials, and met and overcome similar 

 obstacles. 



The valuable scientific contributions to our knowledge of 

 the relative value of feeding substances, and the effects of 

 fertilization upon the quality of our cultivated fruits, open 

 up a new field of study, which promises to be of the highest 

 importance to every intelligent cultivator and to the com- 

 munity at large ; while the report of the inspector of fertil- 

 izers will constitute the best possible guide to every pur- 

 chaser of these articles, and furnish a safe and trustworthy 

 basis of innumerable business transactions. Using as we 

 now are more than a million dollars' worth of concentrated 

 commercial fertilizers every year, such a guide is of the 

 highest value, and, indeed, absolutely indispensable, to every 

 farmer who aims to make his purchases intelligently. 



The paper upon the sugar-beet and the manufacture of 

 beet-sugar will be found to -be very timely, and to supply a 

 want now very generally felt in the community for the latest 

 and most trustworthy information upon that subject. The 

 history of the beet-sugar industry in Europe ought to be 

 carefully studied and mastered by us before embarking 

 largely in it here. The experience of many years there has 

 worked out important problems, which it will not do for us 

 to ignore. A full knowledge of the obstacles which they have 

 met and successfully overcome will be the surest guide for 

 us. We need to recognize and appreciate all the conditions 

 requisite to success, which have been established in older 

 countries only after the expenditure and the loss of vast 

 amounts of capital and the experience of untold individual 

 disappointment and disaster. Such a knowledge of the 

 results obtained there during more than half a century of 

 experimenting and scientific investigation will enable us to 

 start with an immense advantage in our favor, and to avoid 

 innumerable mistakes which must be regarded as inevitable 

 incidents of all new enterprises. 



To raise roots for stock, whether it be the sugar-beet, the 

 mangold, the ruta-baga, or some other, is one thing : to raise 

 the sugar-beet intelligently for the economical manufacture 



