AGRICULTURAL MANUFACTURES. 469 
dance of food; and the returns of the sugar-works enable them to 
add commercial manures which indefinitely increase the fertility of 
the soil. In 1855, the city of Valenciennes, the principal seat of the 
manufacture, was able to inscribe upon a triumphal arch these signifi- 
cant words: ‘‘ Produce of wheat in the arrondissement before the 
manufacture of sugar, 353,000 hectolitres, (120,146 quarters 5 bushels); 
number of oxen, 700. Produce of wheat since the manufacture of 
sugar, 421,000 hectolitres (144,782 quarters); number of cattle, 
11,500.”’ 
The question, however, as M. Lavergne candidly admits, still re- 
mains to be decided, whether a still greater progress would not have 
been made if the manufacture had not existed, and the same capital 
and skill had been applied to agriculture and grazing; and he refers 
to the case of England as a proof of what may be done without ally- 
ing manufactures to agriculture. There is, however, no doubt that 
in France the sugar manufacture has greatly stimulated the cultivation 
of land, and that far more manure has been made by the consumption 
of the pulp and the preserved foliage of the beet root than would 
have been raised had the manufacture never existed. On the other 
hand, the cultivation itself of 20,000 hectares (49,275 acres) of beet- 
root, producing to the grower, according to M. Lavergne, from £14 
to £50 per acre, according to the quality of the soil, must have 
placed agriculture upon a very different footing from that which it 
occupied when there was no manufacture connected with it.* 
The pulp or solid residue of the beetroot, divested of the juice, 
contains still from two to three per cent. of saccharine, and is greedily 
eaten by cattle and pigs, which fatten quickly upon it. Milch cows, 
although equally fond of it, will soon lose their milk, and go dry, if 
fed upon it, and their calves will die of inanition. This is probably 
owing to the small quantity of sugar and moisture it contains, which 
renders it unprofitable for the production of milk, which, as is well 
known, contains a large proportion of sugar.t The proportion of 
starch also, the basis of sugar, is only one per cent. on the residue, so 
* The quantity of pulp is about 20 per cent. of the entire root; thus 1000 tons of the lat- 
ter will yield 200 tons of pulp. 
+ In Tartary the natives convert milk into a species of sugar by the action of frost in the 
following manner; The milk, when new, is exposed in winter in broad shallow pans to the 
blast of the east wind. Ina short time the aqueous parts of the surface are evaporated, and 
a white crispy crust forms, which is perfectly dry. This is scraped off, and the action of 
the frost is repeated ; and so on from time to time, till the whole of the milk is thus convert 
ed into a dry powder, which, if kept from the air, may be preserved any length of time. It 
possesses all the properties of milk, and when mixed with water answers the same purpose: 
