HOOT-CROPS. 31 



3. Experiments with Sugar-beet. 



To the Order Chenopodiacese, and to the species Beta Sugar-beet, 

 vulgaris, we owe many varieties of sugar-beet, and also many- 

 varieties of feeding-beet or mangel-wurzel. Mangel-wurzel 

 is a very important agricultural crop in some localities of 

 our own country, whilst sugar-beet is not. Trials have, 

 however, been made on the growth ot sugar-beet for the 

 production of sugar; and as we have experimented on the 

 subject, we will in the first place illustrate the influence of 

 various manures on the growth of the crop, and on the pro- 

 duction of sugar in it ; and afterwards, in more detail, give 

 somewhat similar results relating to the mangel. 



The experiments with both crops were made in the same 

 field and on the same plots as those on which first Norfolk 

 whites and afterwards Swedish turnips had been grown. 

 The last crop of Swedish turnips was taken in 1870, and 

 sugar-beet then followed for five years in succession, 1871-75 

 inclusive. Experiments with the mangel were then com- 

 menced in 1876, and have been continued up to the present 

 time, so that the crop of 1894 was the nineteenth in suc- 

 cession. It has been stated that by the continuous growth 

 of the one description of crop, the Swedish turnip, with one 

 character and limited range of roots, the surface-soil had 

 become close, and a somewhat impervious pan was formed 

 below it. Therefore before growing sugar-beet the land was 

 ploughed more deeply. 



During the first three of the five years of sugar-beet, the Plan of ex- 

 arrangement of the plots and of the manures was substan- P enment - 

 tially the same as afterwards for mangels ; but during the 

 last two years of the five, neither farmyard nor any other 

 nitrogenous manure was applied, the object being to deter- 

 mine the effects of the unexhausted residue of the nitrogen- 

 ous applications during the preceding three years. 



Sugar-beet has a very much more deeply penetrating root Character- 

 than the turnip, and more even than the feeding-beet or is tic growth 

 mangel. In fact, great command of the resources of the uet^' 

 soil and subsoil is a characteristic of the cultivated plant. 

 The root found to give the highest percentage of sugar is 

 very characteristically fusiform ; and by careful selection of 

 plants from which to grow seed, varieties are obtained nearly 

 the whole of the swollen root of which forms under the 

 surface of the soil — the percentage of sugar being much 

 lower in the above-ground portion exposed to light. To 

 such perfection has the art of selection, cultivation, and ac- 

 climatisation reached, that some descriptions, when grown 



