Development of (he Beet-Sugar Industry 9 



beets back and planted them in Bohemia on their retm-n. 

 Oliver de Serres, in 1590, seems to have been the first to 

 record the sweet properties of the beet. He said that " the 

 juice yielded on boiling is similar to sugar sirup." He be- 

 lieved that alcohol could be made by fermenting the beet. 

 The red beet was introduced into England in 1548, but the 

 white variety was unknown there until 1570. Four varie- 

 ties were known by 1782, the small and large red, the 

 yellow, and the white. In 1786 Abbe Commerel 

 published a book on the value of beets as feed for 

 stock. 



Discovery of sugar in beets. 



Although De Serres had suggested the sweet properties 

 of beets, he did not obtain pure sugar from them. It was 

 left to the German chemist, Andrew S, Marggraf, a mem- 

 ber of the Berlin Academy of Sciences, first to obtain 

 sugar from the beet. This he accomplished in 1747, but 

 it was a half century before this discovery was put to any 

 practical use. The methods used by Marggraf in extract- 

 ing sugar in the laboratory are described as follows : " After 

 having cut the beets into thin slices, he dried them care- 

 fully and reduced them to a powder. On eight ounces of 

 beet thus pulverized, he poured six ounces of alcohol recti- 

 fied as highly as he could obtain it, and placed the mixture 

 over a gentle fire in a sand bath. As soon as the liquid 

 came to a boiling point he withdrew it from the fire and 

 filtered it into a flagon, which he stoppered and left to it- 

 self. After some weeks he perceived that it had formed 

 crystals, which presented all the physical and chemical 

 characters of the crystals of sugar from cane. The alcohol 



