CULTIVATION OF THE BEET. 131 



nure, increases their saccharine contents two or three 

 per cent. Instances are recorded of beets so fertilized 

 containing twenty per cent, of sugar. 



Gussefeld also makes an artificial manure contain- 

 ing fourteen per cent, of potash and thirteen per cent, 

 phosphoric acid. Experiments go to show that it 

 increases the yield of beets over that obtained on 

 unfertilized land from twenty-five to thirty per cent., 

 and the percentage of sugar about one half per cent. 

 An artificial manure, containing seventeen per cent, 

 of soluble phosphates, made by Gils & Co., of Ant- 

 werp, costing $48 a ton of 2,240 pounds, was ap- 

 plied to land in Saxony at the rate of 325 pounds 

 per acre, or at a cost for manure of about seven 

 dollars. 



The following were the results, as compared with a 

 field precisely similar and well manured with stable 

 manure : Crop on an acre, with stable manure, 

 31,064 pounds, or 13.87 tons ; with artificial guano, 

 48,741 pounds, or 21.76 tons. Difference in favor of 

 guano, 17,677 pounds, or 7-^9 tons. 



In seventeen cases recorded in Saxony, fields ma- 

 nured with Peruvian guano, mixed with this fertilizer 

 in the proportion of two of the former to three of the 

 latter, produced, as compared with unmanured land 

 of equal original condition, an increased crop of 3^ 

 tons per acre. 



It is used in Saxony at the rate of over 12,000 tons 

 a year. 



A Mr. Frank, of Stassfurt, in Prussia, near Magde- 

 burg, has compounded an artificial manure from the 

 refuse rock salt of the mines in his neighborhood. 



