Sugar Producing Plants. 457 
veteran sugar cane appeared. It might have been long, 
however, before it could have coped successfully with foreign 
sugar, had not the first Napoleon, whose eye was as keen in 
peace as it was in war, lent his mighty help to thestruggling 
industry in France, where Crespel Delisseand a few others, 
recognizing the value of Achard’s results, were striving to 
establish the new industry on a firm footing. The result 
was in accordance with the Emperor’s favorite maxim that 
God favours the heaviest battalions, other things being 
equal, and beet sugar rose steadily in France. Germany 
followed the good example, and then Holland, Belgium, 
Austria and Russia took it up. To-day out of five million 
tons of sugar consumed in the world per annum, more 
than half is made from the sugar beet. The rest is made 
from the sugar-cane principally, and some from the date- 
palm, the sugar-maple with which we are familiar, and the 
sorghum or bastard sugar-cane. The only plants which 
deserve any extended notice are the cane and the beet, for 
they alone are of commercial importance. The sorghum 
is capable doubtless of great things, although, up to now 
the costly and valuable experiments of the United States 
Government with it, have not resulted in much progress 
among the growers of the plant, 
I will speak first of the sugar-beet, as it now occupies 
first place as a sugar-producing plant in the world, and bids 
fair to hold its own against all comers. 
The sugar beet is a hardy biennial plant, indigenous to 
the south of Europe. We are all familiar with the shape 
of the ordinary mangel wurzel, and it resembles this more 
than any other, being white in the flesh and not red as 
many suppose. It is smaller than the mangel and much 
heavier in proportion. When from good seed and properly 
cultivated, it grows entirely beneath the ground, only the 
collar, from which the leaves spring, showing. Extensive 
experiments and cultivation have produced an immense 
number of varieties, but the origin of the rich sugar beet is 
the old root known to botanists as the Beta alba. Only 
the part which grows below the ground is valuable to the 
