156 AGRICULTURAL REPORT. 



Lac, Wiscousin, for the luauufacture of beot-sugar. The capital of this 

 company, was but $12,000, aud the works Avhich they erected had a 

 capacity of only 10 tons of beets per day. Spring floods and summer 

 drought operated unfavorably on the prospects of this company, and in 

 18G9 Messrs. Bonesteel and Otto having received a proposition from 

 California, removed to that State, and in 1870 joined the recently organ- 

 ized Alvarado Beet-Sugar Company. A co-operative enterprise of Ger- 

 man farmers for the manufacture of beet-sugar was formed at Black 

 Hawk, Wisconsin, in 1870, and though they are working with but a small 

 capital their success has been quite encouraging. An imperfect supply 

 of water appears to be the principal obstacle in the way of their success. 



In the year 18G0 Mr. Speckman made an attempt to cultivate the 

 beet for sugar in the vicinity of San Francisco, California. The soil 

 proved to be too highly charged with saline matter, however, and he 

 abandoned the project. In 1869 Mr. Wentworth, of Alvarado, made a 

 few hundred pounds of beet-sugar, which so encouraged capitalists that 

 a company, under the style of the Alvarado Sugar Company, with a 

 capital of $250,000, was formed by General Huchison, and Messrs. Bone- 

 steel and Otto, of Wisconsin, experienced sugar-manufacturersj were 

 induced to take the management of its affairs. In 1870 drought inter- 

 fered with their operations, but in 1871 they produced 15 tons of beets 

 per acre, with an aggregate yield of over 1,000,000 pounds of sugar from 

 the crop. The results obtained are so favorably regarded that two other 

 companies have been organized in California, and the beet-sugar enter- 

 prise in the Pacific States is, by many, already deemed a success. 



Another experiment, and by no means the least important, has been 

 conducted by Professor Gcessmann, of Amherst College, Massachusetts. 

 In this exjieriment, conducted on comparatively a small scale, with an 

 apparatus extemporized for the occasion, and consequently inferior to 

 that which would be used in a regular sugar factory, he succeeded in 

 obtaining from 8 to 9J per cent, of sugar from the beets raised, which 

 is fuUy up to the highest European standard. His yield was froni 1,900 

 to 2,000 pounds of sugar per acre. 



The questions of climate, soil, manner of cultivation, and modes of 

 treatment in separating and crystallizing the sugar, adapted to the pe- 

 culiarities of the beet grown in this country, must all be determined ; 

 which will require time, and a patient investigation by men of science, 

 backed by capital. Some of these conditions are already known, but 

 much remains yet to be discovered. We cannot too highly commend 

 the example of the Massachusetts Agricultural College in taking the 

 lead in this investigation.* 



The beet is a biennial plant, and like others of that class stores 

 away in the root, or other underground organ, by its first year's work, 

 the prepared material for perfecting the seed. In southern climates, 

 where the long summer gives an opportunity, in the first year, to do 

 much of the work directly, there is less necessity for storing away, in 

 the root, so large a stock of prepared material. Hence we find suoh 

 vegetables as the potato, the turnip, the beet, &c., attaining their high- 

 est perfection in the higher latitudes, where the short summers require 

 a very rapid second year's growth. Conforming to this law we find the 

 sugar-beet succeeding best in the northern portions of France and Ger- 



* Since writing the above we laave received the following interesting report from the 

 University of Virginia. The crop, as indicated in another report, is fully up to the 

 average of European crops, in quantity. Perhaps many of the valleys of tlie Alle- 

 ghany Mountains, as well as the foot-hills on their eastern margin, will have the in- 

 tensity of summer heat so modified as to he well adapted to beet culture. 



