Development of the Beet-Sugar Industry 9 
beets back and planted them in Bohemia on their return. 
Oliver de Serres, in 1590, seems to have been the first to 
record the sweet properties of the beet. He said that “the 
juice yielded on boiling is similar to sugar sirup.” He be- 
lieved that alcohol could be made by fermenting the beet. 
The red beet was introduced into England in 1548, but the 
white variety was unknown there until 1570. Four varie- 
ties were known by 1782, the small and large red, the 
yellow, and the white. In 1786 Abbé Commerel 
published a book on the value of beets as feed for 
stock. 
Discovery of sugar in beets. 
Although De Serres had suggested the sweet properties 
of beets, he did not obtain pure sugar from them. It was 
left to the German chemist, Andrew S. Marggraf, a mem- 
ber of the Berlin Academy of Sciences, first to obtain 
sugar from the beet. This he accomplished in 1747, but 
it was a half century before this discovery was put to any 
practical use. The methods used by Marggraf in extract- 
ing sugar in the laboratory are described as follows: “After 
having cut the beets into thin slices, he dried them care- 
fully and reduced them to a powder. On eight ounces of 
beet thus pulverized, he poured six ounces of alcohol recti- 
fied as highly as he could obtain it, and placed the mixture 
over a gentle fire in a sand bath. As soon as the liquid 
came to a boiling point he withdrew it from the fire and 
filtered it into a flagon, which he stoppered and left to it- 
self. After some weeks he perceived that it had formed 
crystals, which presented all the physical and chemical 
characters of the crystals of sugar from cane. The alcohol 
