12 ANALYSES OF SUGAR BEETS, 1905 TO 1910. 



to guard against evaporation and also squeezing of the pulp ; evapora- 

 tion causes, of course, a higher sugar content than is naturally 

 present, while squeezing ma^ result in either a higher or lower 

 sugar content, depending on the sample drawn. With quick mixing, 

 however, little loss occurs. 



In case the section has been removed by hand, it must be reduced 

 to a pulp. There are many machines made for this purpose; in 

 general, any meat chopper which yields a finely divided product 

 may be used, but some forms are preferable to others. An evenly 

 cut or shredded pulp should be obtained by grinding with little or no 

 pressing. Machines that operate by feeding the beets by means of 

 a screw to the cutting knife are very liable to express some of the 

 juice, while if the screw is fitted with knives which do the cutting as 

 well as the feeding the pressure on the pulp is lessened. Other 

 machines have a revolving bowl with rotatory knives constantly 

 turning, the two being driven by the same power. This yields a fine 

 pulp with little pressing, but is hardly capable of receiving halves or 

 even quarters of beets to be sliced. An ordinary horse-radish grater 

 serves admirably for reducing sections of beets to a fine pulp. This 

 grater has a rotating drum provided with nails extending from its sur- 

 face about a quarter of an inch. An adjustable chute extends to the 

 drum, so that the beets can be fed to it by hand. The nails may be 

 replaced by embedding hacksaw blades in the drum and allowing 

 the coarse teeth to stand out above the surface. In using such a 

 grater care must be exercised not to feed too fast and to have the 

 carrier for the beets just touch the points of the drum. In this way 

 the beet is cut squarely off and no portion goes through uncut. It 

 is highly important to feed beets into this machine in such a way 

 that the grater comes in contact with the skin of the beet first, 

 otherwise it is difficult to shred the skin, which is generally very 

 tough. When one sample is finished all of the beet particles must 

 be carefully brushed off of the drum and machine to avoid mixing 

 the samples. This, however, is true with any machine. After 

 shredding, the sample may be thoroughly mixed by hand. 



SAMPLING AND TESTING SEED BEETS. 



Beets that are to be used for seed production are tested for sugar 

 content, and it is essential to obtain a sample from them without 

 injuring their productiveness. This is usually accomplished by bor- 

 ing a hole through the beet in some such way as is shown in figure 3, 

 and collecting the borings for analysis. It is highly important to 

 control the direction of the passage of this rasp through the beet. 

 As has been shown, the sugar is not equally distributed throughout 

 the beet. It behooves one, therefore, to cut through as many zones 

 as possible and the same cut should be made in all cases if the results 



