CULTIVATION OF THE BEET. 13 



tallizable sugar. They contained no uncrystallizable 

 sugar, neither grape nor mannite. 



Nevertheless, by the processes in actual use there 

 was obtained but five or six per cent, in the two or 

 three first months after harvest, and later in the sea- 

 son three to four per cent, only ; the whole average 

 being but four to five per cent. 



He expressed the belief that inasmuch as the beet 

 contained ninety-five per cent, of juice, while there 

 was but seventy per cent, extracted, the yield of 

 sugar might be largely increased.* 



In order to stimulate improvement, the " Society for 

 the Encouragement of Beet-sugar Manufacture " of- 



o o 



fered a prize of 10,000 francs to the person who should 



* The sugar beet actually contains ninety-five per cent, of juice, 

 of which only eighty is usually extracted, although eighty-five 

 per cent, is occasionally obtained. Robert de Massy, of St. 

 Quentin, in France, has invented a method by which he claims 

 to obtain ninety-three per cent. The inventor is a very wealthy, 

 as well as an ingenious man, and claims that his process will not 

 only increase the yield of sugar from one to one and a half per 

 cent., but will also materially lessen expenses, as it dispenses with 

 all the hydraulic presses, hurdles, and sacks, besides diminishing the 

 number of workmen required in the factory. I visited Mr. De 

 Massy's sugar factory at Busigny last winter with the proprietor, 

 to see the apparatus in operation, but an accident prevented its 

 working. Since my return, Mr. De Massy, through the " Jour- 

 nal des Fabricants de Sucre," invited all the manufacturers to visit 

 Busigny on the 15th of May, for ,the purpose of s eing the appa- 

 ratus at work. The amount of juice obtained at this trial was 

 eighty-nine per cent. ; but I infer from reading the article in which 

 an account of the meeting is given, that the experiment did not 

 thoroughly satisfy the manufacturers present of the value of the 

 invention in its then existing state. 



