234 

 FACTS FROM VARIOUS SOURCES. 



Beet sugar in California.— The beet sugar works at Alvarado, 

 Alameda County, California, are reported as progressing to completion, 

 at an estimated cost of 875,000, and will Lave a cax^acity for crushing 

 fifty tons of beets per day. The capital stock of the company is $200,000. 

 The mill is to be in running order by the time of the next beet crop. 

 The enterprise will be conducted by men who have had much i^ractical 

 experience in the business in German factories, and in this country. At 

 the commencement of operations one hundred to one hundred and fifty 

 men will be employed. Responsible parties oft'er to contract to raise 

 any quantity of the beet for $4: per ton. The average i^rice paid in France, 

 Belgium, and Germany for the five years ending with 1868 was $4 20 

 per ton. The beet contains on an average ten per cent, of sugar, but 

 seldom more than seven and a half jjer cent, is actually realized in the 

 sugaries of France, where the method is by the direct pressing of the 

 pulp. In Belgium and Germany fully eight per cent, is the fair work- 

 ing product, so that eight pounds of merchantable sugar is the cer- 

 tain product of one hundred pounds of the beets grown in the soil and 

 climate of those countries. It is stated that an analysis of California- 

 grown beets shows that they contain ten per cent, of sugar, and may, 

 therefore, be expected to produce at least one hundred and sixty pounds 

 of sugar to each ton of beets. 



Success of a YiinICUlturist. — In the spring of 1866, an intelli- 

 gent German, acquainted with grape culture and wine-making, bought 

 forty acres of land for $400, in Put-in-Bay, (an island in Lake Erie,) and 

 immediately commenced planting vines. On the 9th of June three and 

 a half acres were planted with the Delaware and Concord, and at the 

 present time seven acres are planted with Xorton's Virginia and Ives's 

 Seedling, and one quarter of an acre with lona. There is also a nur- 

 sery of three hundred of the Catawba, and forty other varieties for ex- 

 perimental pin-poses. In 1808 there was a product of one and a half 

 tun of wine of the Concord grape ; and one fourth of a tun of the Dela- 

 ware. In 1869, when the crop was very poor, three and one-half acres 

 produced $700 worth of grapes. When the land Avas i)urchased it was 

 in a rough state, without buildings or fence. It is now provided vrith a 

 fence, a two-story house, barn, cellar in the rock, Avell, &c., and its pro- 

 prietor has a stock on hand of 10,000 gallons of wine, consisting of Red 

 Delaware, and Red and White Concord, Xorton, and Catawba. 



Fruit on the Illinois Central railroad. — In 1869 the fruit busi- 

 ness on the Illinois Central railroad, from Centralia and stations south 

 of that place, to Chicago, amounted, in a season of fifty-five daja, to over 

 2,500 tons. The same year the railroad company sold to one thousand 

 five hundred and twenty-one purchasers 85,860 acres of land, at an aver- 

 age price of $10 48 per acre — making an aggregate of $899,348 71. 

 Fifty-six was the average number sold to each settler. Of these lands 

 34,990 acres are in Southern Illinois, and south of the Terre Haute and 

 Alton railroad. At the end of the year 457,779.17 acres of laud re- 

 mained unsold. 



International exhibition at Gratz, Austria. — AVe are informed 

 through the State Department that, in celebration of the anniversary 

 of the organization of the Agricultural Society at Gratz, in Styria, Aus- 

 tria, it is proposed to hold during the ensuing autumn an international 

 exposition, to which all agricultural and industrial products will be ad- 

 mitted, as wtiU as objects relating to the fine arts, the sciences, &c. The 

 exposition will be followed by a distribution of medals and premiums. 



