96 CULTURE OF THE SUGAR BEET. 



Yilmorin considers that any good soil that will grow wheat and corn, 

 and has an arable stratum of 12 to 15 inches, will be well suited to this 

 culture ; that where chalk exists in large proportion the yield will be 

 small, but the juice pure. All soils should be thoroughly drained, so 

 that the tap root may not find stagnant water in the subsoil. 



Notwithstanding the differing notions expressed above, it will appear 

 that the physical characters of the soil which tend to render it best suited 

 to the cultivation of the beet are porosity of surface and subsoil, to admit 

 of drainage of superfluous water and of free circulation of the air, and 

 power of absorbing and holding in a condition convenient for ready as- 

 similation the elements of plant-food existing within it or coming from 

 external sources. Unless the supply of these elements be continuous 

 and regular, a purely sandy soil would be undesirable. If no means 

 were provided for the removal of surplus water which might be found 

 in a purely clay soil, or to so improve its condition as to admit of free 

 circulation of air as well as water, it is too heavy, and becomes abso- 

 lutely useless. The same is true of purely calcareous soils, since the 

 same unfavorable conditions would prevail, though perhaps to not quite 

 the same extent. These soils would also be unsuited to the plant itself, 

 because they would not admit of the free progress of the tap root nor of 

 the lateral fibrous roots in their search for nutrition or in following the 

 natural course of development, and, as will appear later on, these con- 

 ditions have a powerful influence upon the ultimate yield of sugar from 

 the surface cultivated. But if the sandy soil described be mixed with 

 either or both of the others mentioned, and with humus, in suitable 

 proportions, the conditions most favorable to the maintenance of a reg- 

 ular and plentiful supply of food, the healthy condition of the root, and 

 its consequent normal development, will be assured. 



The chemical character of the soil is of quite as great importance as 

 its physical condition. For the proper development of the beet for the 

 production of sugar it should contain in a suitable and assimilable form 

 all the elements usually necessary to the normal existence and develop- 

 ment of plants, and attention must therefore be had to the conditions 

 in which these substances exist in the soil. Phosphoric acid, potash, 

 nitrogen compounds, and lime are especially necessary to the life of the 

 plant, but if these exist in insoluble combinations on the one hand, or in 

 forms suitable for assimilation but in excessive quantities on the other, 

 they will either be useless in the economy of nutrition in the first in- 

 stance, or will stimulate the plant to abnormal growth unsuited to the 

 ready extraction of sugar in the second. It is this branch of the sub- 

 ject that has occupied the attention and enlisted' the energies of scien- 

 tists and landed proprietors, and the influence of the different combina- 

 tions of the various leading elements of plant-food, and more especially, 

 during later years, of nitrogen in the soil, has constituted the subject of 

 frequent and continued investigation. 



