18 SUPPLEMENT. 



tal and labor. Improved farm management and unusual 

 progress in the modes of separating the sugar at a lower 

 cost went hand in hand. European agriculturists have 

 accomplished this thrifty union of mutual industrial and ag- 

 ricultural interests, only by devoting themselves with almost 

 unrivaled perseverance to the task of producing a sugar-beet 

 which contains the largest possible amount of sugar in the most 

 favorable condition for extraction. The solution of the prob- 

 lem, whether beet-sugar manufacture can succeed with us, as a 

 paying enterprise, will prove to depend here, as has been the 

 case in Europe, on the interest which intelligent agriculturists 

 and agricultural chemists will take in raising a suitable sugar- 

 beet ; for the quality of the root controls to a large degree the 

 financial success of the industrial enterprise. A mere high per- 

 centage of sugar in the beet-root is not the sole requirement, 

 although a most important one, but the production of a beet 

 which contains the largest possible amount of sugar with the 

 smallest possible percentage of foreign substances, whether 

 saline, nitrogenous, or indifferent, non-nitrogenous organic 

 compounds, for practice has established beyond doubt, that for 

 every percentage of foreign admixture, about one and a half 

 per cent of sugar in the juice will be rendered uncrystallizable, 

 and thus converted into a less valuable molasses. It is of the 

 utmost importance that the difficulties to be encountered be 

 well understood, for a temporary check caused by want of 

 proper precaution in producing a suitable beet, or providing the 

 necessary apparatus, or oversight in the general management, 

 would be deplorable, considering the benefits to be gained for 

 agricultural development alone, in case the experiment should 

 succeed. It is then to our intelligent farmers these few pages 

 are addressed, for the purpose of aiding in the dissemination of 

 facts, which have been instrumental in the development of the 

 sugar-beet cultivation and the beet-sugar manufacture. In- 

 fluenced by such views, I proposed a year ago to enter upon 

 experiments concerning sugar-beet cultivation upon the college 

 farm, and procured a variety of seeds from successful sugar- 

 beet cultivators in Germany, believing that much was gained 

 by having the best to begin with. The first year's crop has 

 been gathered, and the percentage of sugar of each of the 

 thirteen kinds ascertained. Beyond that point no experiments 



