248 Chronicles of Science. [-A-pril, 



Analyses have proved that our sugar-beets of 1868 have contained 

 9 per cent, of sugar, which is rather more than those of Dutch 

 growth : and roots grown with sewage at Lodge Farm yielded over 

 13 per cent, to Dr. Voelcker, Mr. Duncan's factory at Lavenham 

 has begun work. Eight hundred tons have been grown for him by 

 the Suffolk farmers ; and contracts have been completed to supply six 

 thousand tons next year ; and there is every prospect of the industry 

 being established at other points. At a recent meeting of the 

 West Suffolk Chamber of Agriculture, Mr. Duncan said that the 

 prospect of a satisfactory establishment of the beet-sugar manufac- 

 ture in England now is greater than it has ever been, for in 

 Cuba— which alone has hitherto supplied us with as much sugar as 

 all the beet-sugar of the Continent — the abandonment of slavery is 

 imminent; and this will, no doubt, so diminish supplies as very 

 materially to raise the price. Moreover, the industry is not by any. 

 means an exhaustion of the soil. Sugar-beet does not exhaust the 

 land, even so much as mangold-wurzel growing, A small root, 

 with a small percentage of ash is desired : and as it is the ash alone 

 which the plant takes from the soil, that will for the most part 

 be returned to it in the compressed cake of pulp which is sent back 

 from the factory to the farm. 



Turning now to another subject, we find from Dr, Voelcker s 

 report to the English Agricultural Society, that four hundred 

 and thirty-two analyses of manures, and cattle food, made in 1868, 

 indicate the general excellence of the superphosphates supplied 

 to Enghsh farmers last year. Compound artificial manures, on the 

 other hand, which are generally manufactured on a basis of spoiled 

 guano, were inferior and dear. Sulphate of ammonia has increased 

 in use for other purposes than those of English agriculture, and has 

 thus risen enormously in value. The coprolite beds of Suffolk and 

 Cambridgeshire are gradually becoming exhausted. Large <pianiities 

 of Sombrero rock, and of the recently discovered phosphorite of the 

 valley of the Lalm, in Nassau, have been imported. 



The immense demand for artificial foods has given a greater 

 impetus to the adulteration of oilcakes. Among other newly intro- 

 duced cattle foods is " Nutritious cocoa extract." " Theobroma," 

 the generic name of the plant, signifying " food for gods,'" has long 

 since proved an agreeable food for man, and it is quite jiossible that 

 some of the coarser refuse [)art of the seeds from whicli the cocoa of 

 the breakfast table is obtained may yield a wholesome food for beasts. 



Among the more important points in Dr. Voelcker's report is 

 the scarcity of sulphate of ammonia. M. Ville, of Paris, has lately 

 made known the fact that salts of ammonia are found in large 

 quantities in some of the Tuscan lagoons. This fact had, indeed, 

 been already fully investigated and published by ]\I. Becclii, a distin- 

 guished Itahan chemist and minemlogist, who in 1853 described a 



