CULTURE OF THE SUGAK BEET. 



75 



most perfect as to form and the most productive. It has but few leaves, aud very 

 nearly one-fourth the length of the root is above ground. This part is gray, greenish, 

 or brown ; is clean and smooth like the buried portion, which is more or less pink. On 

 the other hand it is the least rich of all the sugar beets, and is at present almost uni- 

 versally proscribed by manufacturers. We believe the sentence rather severe, because 

 the gray-top beet is capable of giving, by means of a suitable culture, yields of sugar 

 per acre which rival those of other races, and we believe it may be sufficiently im- 

 proved with regard to the richness without losing its qualities of form and volume. 



The white improved Vilmorin beet (Fig. 6) descended directly from the wbite Si- 

 lesian, was brought by Mons. L. Vilmorin, by means of selection, to present, after 

 several generations, a richness of 15 to 18 per cent, of sugar. This 

 has been its condition for long years, and experience proves that 

 it would be chimerical to endeavor to obtain greater richness, be- 

 cause the plant would then cease to grow with sufficient force. 

 Efforts have tended in these latter years toward the improvement 

 of the form and increase of the product, and important progress 

 has been realized in this direction, since the improved beet, which 

 was represented at the beginning as giviug per acre a product of 

 8 to 10 tons, containing 15 to 16 per cent, of sugar, has given in 

 late yields of 18 to 20 tons per acre with a richness in sugar vary- 

 ing from 15 to 18 per cent. 



This race has always been considered particularly suited to spe- 

 cial conditions of culture and manufacture which are not those 

 of France ; it seems to us, however, that, in consequence of the 

 modifications to which it has been submitted in later times, and 

 which have increased its volume and its yield, it may be adopted 

 in certain cases, even in our country. By growing it very closely, 

 the inferiority of its volume as compared with that of other races 

 is in great part compensated for, and on the other hand it has been 

 proven by numerous analyses, especially iu the competitive exhib- 

 itions of beets at Arras and Senlis, that this race surpassed all FlG e.—Vilmorin's lm- 

 others, not only in saccharine richness, but also in the purity of proved Beet. 



its juice, which contained less of ashes and salts than that of any other variety, an 

 advantage of very great importance. 



This brings us to the consideration of the internal structure and com- 

 position of the beet, which, like the external characteristics, may natu- 

 rally be modified by the conditions of culture and nutrition to which the 

 plant is subjected. 



The structure of the root has been the subject of careful study by M. 

 Decaisne, the able director of the Department of Vegetable Physiology 

 of the Jardin des Plantes at Paris, and he has made a complete micro- 

 scopic examination and consequent description of the minute anatomy, 

 but in this report we shall notice only those physical characters which 

 are manifest to ordinary vision, and the relations they bear to the eco- 

 nomic value of the root. It is this part of the subject that has been 

 worked up by Payen, who called attention to the appearance of the 

 alternate opaque and transparent bands when the root is sliced in the 

 direction of its longer axis, and of similar zones when cut in the direc- 

 tion of its shorter axis. Of these, he shows that the former or opaque 

 zones are the richer in sugar, and in his memoir on this subject he says :* 



*Compte rendus, xxiv, 909. Quoted in Trait<5 de la Fabrication du Sucre, by E. J. 

 Maumen6, t. I. 



